Why do people still collect?

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paphioboy

hehehe...
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Penang, Malaysia..d home of fabulous paphs.
I recently saw this picture on Facebook:
Bellatulumwild.jpg


Original link is here: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?...&type=1&ref=notif&notif_t=photo_reply&theater

The picture shows 1200 plants of bellatulum harvested from the wild in Thailand. :( Out of that, the collector/nursery owner says he can successfully establish 80% if them. I am curious to know why 'common' species like bellatulum are still being harvested from the wild.. It is not a new discovery, having being entrenched in cultivation for a very long time, and ironically, line-breeding bellatulum is very advanced in Thailand itself (so I think...). So, any ideas why this is so? :confused:
 
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Could it be a salvage of a timber harvest project (or some other development project)? Could be the forest people just trying to sell anything they can scrounge as the forest supplies less and less of their needs.

As you noted line bred belatulum are readily obtainable in Thailand, and they gotta be pretty cheap by now too.

Plus are there even 1200 species collectors in Thailand that don't already have a have dozen bellatulum?

Pretty amazing. There can't be any $ incentive to send this very commonly cultivated species out of the country.
 
For one thing, bellatulum is a long established species. Collected plants can always be passed on as propagated plants. Why do it? Money...any money. It may not be much, but its still some.
 
maybe to hope to salvage from an area that would otherwise be clear cut? (wishful thinking).. maybe in hopes of finding a new or aberrant color form or variety?
 
The picture shows 1200 plants of bellatulum harvested from the wild in Thailand. :( Out of that, the collector/nursery owner says he can successfully establish 80% if them. I am curious to know why 'common' species like bellatulum are still being harvested from the wild.. It is not a new discovery, having being entrenched in cultivation for a very long time, and ironically, line-breeding bellatulum is very advanced in Thailand itself. so, any ideas why this is so? :confused:

Very common, in Jatujak there is always a box of a couple thousands bellatulum from the wild around. They come from Burma, never ever from Thailand ( there are still colonies, but the quality is low for the flowers, price more expensive, and they are not as plentiful as in Burma.). There is no advanced line breeding of bellatulum in Thailand at all. F1 at most right now (though some friends are doing further generations).

Could it be a salvage of a timber harvest project (or some other development project)? Could be the forest people just trying to sell anything they can scrounge as the forest supplies less and less of their needs.

As you noted line bred belatulum are readily obtainable in Thailand, and they gotta be pretty cheap by now too.

Plus are there even 1200 species collectors in Thailand that don't already have a have dozen bellatulum?

Pretty amazing. There can't be any $ incentive to send this very commonly cultivated species out of the country.

No, 1000 plants is the minimum order from the collector. Below, impossible to get it. The price is 10THB/plant. You can bargain cheaper for bigger quantities. To get good ones, you have to buy at least 3-5 batches of a thousand each, except if you are lucky. One batch comes from one area, and you have quite a few colonies that are really ugly (4 cm flowers, few spots, narrow petals, pieces of crap...). You have quite a few colonies too with FCC quality ones, and most of the colonies are half half. But the quality in a colony is constant.

Line bred bellatulum are not very common in Thailand (they are really rare in fact, thinking of it... Most of the awarded plants are wild established plants so far, except the album, which is warm tolerant, and one or two strains), bellatulum in Thailand for many people does not survive very long, unlike leucochilum and niveum. If you look carefully, you see many line breeding of niveum, leucos, ang thong, concolor, but exceedingly few of bellatulum. It grows cooler first, and second the plants have a disease in the rhizome that wipes most of them out within a couple of years.

For one thing, bellatulum is a long established species. Collected plants can always be passed on as propagated plants. Why do it? Money...any money. It may not be much, but its still some.

A part will surely be exported ( I think most of the batch will die anyway...), the remaining is popular in bloom on the local market. Most of the bellatulum in bloom sold in Jatujak are wild plants established, not seedlings.

maybe to hope to salvage from an area that would otherwise be clear cut? (wishful thinking).. maybe in hopes of finding a new or aberrant color form or variety?

Nope, they just come from Burma, where they grow by the hundreds of thousands. Definitely, they think of getting albinos, ultra red ones ( there are less than 10 plants all over thailand of the ultra red strain, most likely only 2-3), semialba, pinkish, huge flowers... and do not forget, they cannot line breed those easily if at all... so if you are in Thailand and want a nice one, that's the only way.

Anyway, most are going to die very soon when I look at the photo. The crown is bleached, which means the plants have been stored for few days, and the insects already worked out a bit the crowns. If they are not properly treated, the survival will be very, very low if any.

For the profit, they buy 10THB, usually established with nursery leaves they ll sell anywhere between 70 and 150THB per growth. If they did not have any losses, they would make a huge profit.
 
Why people still collect? simple-- because there are people who still like buying wild collected plants... even here in this forumwe find from time to time comments like: "I bought this plant from an ebay seller in Thailand (with some further comments in th thread indicating that it is possibly collected)" or find some nurseries in Europe or USA with plants which obviously wild collecetd (in the best case, even indidicated as such)...
 
I will probably not try bellatulum anytime soon...they die quickly. I have my doubts that those plants will survive in the photograph. But I maybe wrong...
 
There is no advanced line breeding of bellatulum in Thailand at all. F1 at most right now (though some friends are doing further generations).

Line bred bellatulum are not very common in Thailand (they are really rare in fact, thinking of it...

A part will surely be exported ( I think most of the batch will die anyway...), the remaining is popular in bloom on the local market. Most of the bellatulum in bloom sold in Jatujak are wild plants established, not seedlings.

I see.... So does that mean those spectacular bellatulum that some of the Thai growers on this forum have shown us are more likely to be collected than not? That is the same reply I got from the seller. I'm surprised that they have only gotten to F1 generation breeding from seed.. All those gorgeous large blooms with fantastic colours give me the impression that they must have been line bred. So is it the same case with leucochilum and godefroyae also, or have those really grown from seed?
 
I see.... So does that mean those spectacular bellatulum that some of the Thai growers on this forum have shown us are more likely to be collected than not? That is the same reply I got from the seller. I'm surprised that they have only gotten to F1 generation breeding from seed.. All those gorgeous large blooms with fantastic colours give me the impression that they must have been line bred. So is it the same case with leucochilum and godefroyae also, or have those really grown from seed?

Yes, most if not all are wild bellatulums. Some are absolutely spectacular. The best ones were sold at extremely expensive price to Japan before, and they did a lot of line breeding. Nowadays there are less buyers for this kind of things, so... If you see carefully, many niveum, concolor, ang thong, leucochilum, godefroyae have a tag with a number like JOE-437 or MU-279, or YC-52. That's the cross tag. For bellatulum, I have never seen it... well once. You do not see bellatulum flasks available as easily as leucochilum in thailand. They are in fact very rare compared to leucos. And even when I say F1, it is the maximum, and they are not that common.

It existed pure red bellatulum, without dots, but the flower more than 90% covered in blood red (not brown). It existed bellatulum with gold yellow dots, another type of albinistic plant. It existed leucochilum too with 25 cm flower spikes and 10 cm flowers, from the wild (private collection, now I remember the name of the man I visited, Viroon, he died years ago). All of those are long time gone, no progeny, nothing. So that's why too they get wild plants. Even for leucochilum, there are fantastic things bred in Thailand ( a lot of fake ones too, with a small percentage of bellatulum or ang-thong for increase vigor, shape and growth speed), but the best ones cannot compare to what could have been bred with wild plants that existed 20 years ago. So people hope to get plants from a colony as good as that.

For leucochilum and godefroyae, there are many line bred plants around. There are many wild ones too for sale, established, but the buyers usually do not want them ( as foreigners). They still have a pot plant, and a smaller low-grade 'true species' market worldwide as established plants.

Plants like the ones on the picture, if they are grown by a good grower, can look seed grown this winter, spring at the maximum. same for all the leucochilum, thaianum, etc...

By the way, bellatulum ALBUM is very heat tolerant. I know some people grow big plants and bloom it in Bangkok, where the normal ones do not last so long... Albino paphs usually are more warm tolerant than the pigmented ones, it is true too for micranthum album, armeniacum album, wardii album...
 
Human nature perhaps. One may say if I don't take them, someone else will. And a few bucks that seem trivial to us can go a long way in some asian countries.
 
Why people still collect? simple-- because there are people who still like buying wild collected plants... even here in this forumwe find from time to time comments like: "I bought this plant from an ebay seller in Thailand (with some further comments in th thread indicating that it is possibly collected)" or find some nurseries in Europe or USA with plants which obviously wild collecetd (in the best case, even indidicated as such)...

Very good comment!!!!!
 
Erm, I don't think that's an appropriate comparison because you are not fishing endangered species....

Actually certain species of rock fish here on the California coast are protected endangered species and when you catch one you must release it. They always die but it does not stop anyone from fishing.

The point is that not everything people do is for money or to survive. Some collectors like to collect just because that is what they want to do. You might get pleasure from having orchids growing in your house and the other guy might get his from hunting and collecting plants in the forest.
 
Actually certain species of rock fish here on the California coast are protected endangered species and when you catch one you must release it. They always die but it does not stop anyone from fishing.

The point is that not everything people do is for money or to survive. Some collectors like to collect just because that is what they want to do. You might get pleasure from having orchids growing in your house and the other guy might get his from hunting and collecting plants in the forest.

I think it's pretty amazing that given the thousands of flowering plant species (including non orchid), and hundreds of acres in Asia dedicated to producing meristem phals, vandas, dendrobium hybrids, that there are that many species paph aficionados throwing away apparently millions of collected paphs every year.

In comparison to rock fish fishermen, that would probably translate to 100 Thai paph species growers for every fishermen. Trashing a species paph plant must be equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes at the scale we are seeing here.

I realize that the US population is pretty small compared to Asian countries, but maybe paph trashing is a substitute for lack of TV's to stare at.

I guess something else that is different in culture is that US has little regard for its own native species, and everyone prefers exotics and cultivars. Most American orchid growers could care less about native orchids. But apparently in Thailand they can't get enough of their own plants and will strip mine the forests for a short term fix of a simple paph species.

World is crazy.
 

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