I collect too, but only from the immediate area. This year it was zauschneria. I don’t have any on the property but I found some down the road. I’m late putting them in, but we’ll see. I have some absolutely awesome native iris macrosiphon (if you are interested). I transplanted over 100 of them this year. They are indestructible: just dig out a wad, divide them, and plant; they require no water at all, even in a drought year.
We spend more time preparing seeds for exportation than we do gathering. We exceed the U.S.D.A. standards for our imports. I am a conservative gatherer. There has to be an abundant seed supply, we adhere to the local permits and customs of the host nation. Part of the process for our wild collections after it's stateside is a PCR assay. Followed by our previously mentioned "decision tree" model, then micropropagation as you suggested.
Are you familiar with Dara Emery’s book? Propagating California native plants by seed can be very tricky, particularly the fire tolerant species. I’m having better luck with air layering in situ.
BTW, I've not read your entire book, but I'm enthusiastic about what I've read so far. I've recommended it to our local land rights citizens group, KAPO and our County GOP. I'll finish it next month.
It’s an undertaking. Thanks for the referrals.
You ask whether cross pollenating wild rhody's is appropriate, if it results in adverse consequences. This I see as a two sided question. Here's why. In my world, an inferior hybrid does not make it to the micropropagation lab, nor does it with any reputable hybridiser.
I see this in perhaps a more complex light. Local varieties have properties of resistance to local pathogens, some of which can be in remission. Let’s say you come up with a variety that meets all your criteria for “superior,” they cross breed local stock, and then become dominant by virtue of their apparent fitness. Then the pathogen comes back and wipes them out. Consider how much more “fit” are the genes of currently obese people in a famine.
I gave you the example of the yerba santa and the monkeyflower for a similar reason. Neither are particularly pretty plants. Both are INCREDIBLY hardy. It’s their lack of desirability to ungulates that makes them of such value to the other species in the area, some of which might have difficulty without them.
Another example is cotoneaster, a weed species as far as I am concerned (they’re from Spain). The plant isn’t what one would really call invasive, but it does spread by birds they (love the berries) and does rather well here. If it’s growing under an oak the stuff can get to over thirty feet in height, forcing the oak into a condition where it loses its crossing branches and becomes structurally unstable. It’s also a fire ladder that, unlike the native bushes, would kill the oak. The natives are short enough to lighten the lower branches in a fire, a property that probably benefits the oak via end-weight-reduction, something for which homeowners are paying a LOT to tree services to accomplish in order to save their older oaks (it would be really cool to design a walking cherry picker to do that job in the woods).
Such interactions as I have described here are subtle. They certainly wouldn’t be noticed in a lab or test plot. No matter how careful anybody is, there will be errors, especially when we think we have things knocked. It’s the law, so to speak. If one is going to introduce, in my opinion, they had best be prepared to repair the consequences if they are wrong, or they shouldn’t be doing it.
However, I can envision a scenario where that could happen with a landowner and or gardener moving an infected old specimen. Who would be responsible then?
I guess that would depend upon the contract. We have problems with tree services moving pathogens now.
You mention in your book flora is not static due to naturally occurring mutations. I agree. One of the endless laws of Raulston rules of landscapes states: "You can throw a dart at a map of any location in the United States and within a half mile of the impact point, you can find totally new and wonderful plants that have new ornamental interest and potential." Do you assign this a value? (I apologize if you have, I didn't see it in your book yet.)
I don’t pretend to “assign” value to anything. I prefer to let the market set prices, only so long as competing risks are accounted.
I don't view the exotic issue a threat with the floriculture industry today. The use of DNA sequencing, micropropagation techniques, and the wholesale use of botanical benchmarks have effectively decreased the chance of an invasive species released to the public.
To what point? Most invasives today are hitchhikers in other goods, termites in palletes, clams in bilgewater, mosquitoes in ornamental bamboo… that sort of thing. It’s still happening. I see new weeds nearly every year. I have read that exotics may be invasive in as many as one in seven introduced species.
Consequentially, I view the crossbred native or transmutation of a native to be of superior value. Nature has its own safeguards that IF any new sport evolves in a region, it has market potential.
Nature might safeguard the species, but it may not protect what it displaces, thus creating a monoculture or narrow distribution. IMO, such must be taken on a case-by-case basis. I don’t think we can rely upon what at first appearance seems to me a risky assumption.
I’m sorry, although you are probably correct in 95% of the cases you evaluate, it’s the 5% that does cause me some concern. That concern has been induced by fighting the consequences of these disasters. It’s a horrible amount of work. I spend maybe 500 hours annually, just weeding.
Now of course I realize the problems that exists with non-native species already out there and the problems they cause, and I believe you address this in your book.
As I said, I see new ones every year. The rhododendron problem leading to “sudden oak death” arose in the mid-90s. Another phenomenon that escapes your ethic is that of adaptability to aperiodic singularities.
Consider how careful Monsanto has had to be with RoundUp Ready corn. They’ve spent many a million making sure that the pollen doesn’t cross breed with weeds. I just read last week of that it had happened anyway.
Let’s suppose that California red legged frogs are particularly adapted to long term drought. As of now they are being displaced by bullfrogs, brought over the Rockies by people. The bullfrogs do better in wetlands and the CLRFs hold out near grass. Assume the CLRFs go extinct (they’re on their way). Then we get the drought. The bullfrogs die. No frogs at all.
That is why I believe so strongly in offest markets. The CLRFs would be there in a maintained refugium because some landowner would be making sure of it because the market price of protected CLRFs had risen until it was worth it. Even if it takes an effort to maintain them, after a period of time with plenty of opportunity for such singularities as I posited to arise, the justification for keeping CLRFs going would drop and the costs rise to the point where the market would dictate that they go extinct as an inferior allele.
The system thus builds both the caution and the reserves to reverse course in case of error. I would think that such is something of which you would approve. After all, a CLRF is a handsome frog.
The puritanical attitude I see in the industry is very disturbing to me. I consider it a form of fascism. Not only do the worrywarts want to mindlessly dictate what is planted, they try to impose their placement, pruning, and volume standards on us liberty loving floriculturists.
As I said of my neighbors and their Italian thistle, I don’t care what my neighbors do with their property as long as the seed isn’t blowing over the fence (it does). I spend probably 50 hours a year dealing with it, pulling thistles out of native blackberry. There is the potential of yellowjackets and snakes in there.
Finally, I've got one more interesting story that is part speculation, but it should caution you on how complex are these issues. I know a company that is working to introduce redwood to New Zealand as a production tree. New Zealand has VERY strict rules about importing live material. They are doing an extended study and all transportation will of cours be sterile... but you see, there may be a problem with that. It's a little matter of redwood symbiotes.
Well, they found one of them (I think, partly by my query), they need microrhizal fungi in the soil for the redwood to survive. They are dutifully testing the compatibility of that fungus and will eventually figure that one out. OK, so now they've got surviving redwoods. Home free?
Maybe not. I've got a friend, Bud McCrary, who is a major timberland owner. He's done some interesting tests with fence posts. They found, contrary to popular wisdom, that ring cound density has NOTHING to do with the tree's famous decay resistance. In fact, they have some second growth trees that have as good a decay resistance as the famed old growth, and some old growth that rots right away.
Now, I've heard someplace (I don't for the life of me recall where) that redwood has a bacterium or some such that lives in its tissues. Could that be IT? Nobody knows.
The potential cost of error is what makes people think about these things. How much more expensive is it to conduct thest experiments serially? What would it cost if they got the forest in, waited for it to mature, harvested, installed the wood, and it rotted right away? It would cost A BUNDLE to remove the defective redwoods (theyr're almost impossible to kill). Would there be lawsuits and denial? You betcha. In that regard, systemic caution can save money.
Unlike most RICOnuts, I support these introductions, in part as a way to learn. They are much like fields in a factorial array of designed experiments. I just want a tempering force in the marketplace that can fix things when they go awry, WHICH THEY WILL.
It’s a matter of accountability.
I used to find plant life generally uninteresting and hated to go to Mom & Dad's as he would always pull out his slide projector and make us look at his interminable FLOWER PICTURES!!!
Now they're both gone and here's me, gittin interested... go figure.