Oh no! I’d never thought of that, what a shame! I’ll remember that in future and only upload really common ones. Thank you for letting me know x
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Really?! Man! If you knew about how crazy are orchid fanciers (at least here). Walking around Mexican neighbourhoods (including mine) I’ve seen many times houses with native orchids and bromeliads. And even worse, some use the excuse that orchids kill trees (which is false) to mercilessly end with them in a place.
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Diana’s reply in the previous thread is relevant here:
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Although many orchids self-pollinate, though, and sometimes the pollinators are still present at their new, urban settings. But many orchids require very specific habitats which are very far away from their new location.
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We have oil pollinating bees - plant and pollinator are an unusual pair - LONG tongues and flower tubes.
It would be difficult to pollinate the flowers in cultivation, without the bee.
And the wild bees will lack the food they evolved with.
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Oh, yeah, but sometimes, urban areas are lucky enough to still hold the specific pollinators of many orchids in case the orchid was robbed (like carpenter bees and orchid bees as you say).
I’m not defending orchid fanciers, though.
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I just came up with another example. Here, sea cucumbers are quite common, and iNat observers upload them without any fear, but recently I read about an illegal sea cucumber trafficking net in my area that collects tons of sea cucumbers and exports them to China. This is an example of how a species we don’t expect we can put in danger can be put in danger by unaware naturalists.
Equally, when it rains, many land crab species got out to spawn at coastal lagoons or the sea. Many people have been observed arriving at the spots in motorbikes, picking up as much as they can, putting them in bags (or buckets, I don’t quite remember), and vanishing on their motorbikes.
I opened the original topic and moved this and the responses below it to that topic.
Yeah really, I’ve heard of taking cuttings of wild plants, which is legal although discouraged in some areas of the UK, but as for digging the whole plant up?! I wonder why they go crazy for orchids in particular. I’ll stick to daisies and dandelions for now, otherwise I’ll obscure my location. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and helping me keep the wildlife safe :)
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Does it? It seems like if a plant makes seeds, they are made to travel far and wide. I don’t see the harm in bending a seedpod over and shaking a few seeds out.
Of all the seeds a plant succeeds in making - some are eaten, some get bugs in. A few survive. Of those, some get a chance to germinate. Of the seedlings some get eaten. Maybe one survives. Till it gets stomped on.
You can write your own story. The few seeds you take - might mean that not even the one seedling survives.
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Yeah, I didn’t post the wolf I saw until 10 years later, and with a very broad area around it, because when I went to a shop nearby, they were selling wolf skins. I was just thinking how mortified I’d be if I went to a shop and saw a skin with matching markings to the wolf I’d seen.
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I often harvest seeds from common plants - milkweed, evening primrose, lambsquarters (for eating), etc. Should I stop?
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I can split this back out if you like. From what you wrote, I thought this was basically an extension of the old thread.
It looks like we’re going to have to. I was using some remarks from the other thread as a starting point because it was “Not in an iNaturalist context,” but that seems to have gotten lost, too.
No problem.
In horticulture, I’ve seen this to be quite of a common phenomenon. Horticulturists tend to form entire subcultures around a specific group of plants. Orchid hobbiers are a good example. But there’s also succulent lovers, and here in Mexico, women tend to obsess with a specific kind of plant. There’s now a whole culture around Desert Rose (Adenium obesum) here in my city. There’s now a desert rose fever!!!
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Evening primrose is invasive here, so the seeds are better out of our nature - but not if they are then planted in a garden to spread further.
I would worry about plants that are rare or unusual, or freshly reintroduced for habitat restoration.
A judgement call each time and @annkatrinrose can give you an informed answer.
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Depending on where the Adenium plants are sourced - those may also be poached.
There are Endemic and Vulnerable species.
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The majority of plants produce many, many more seeds than will ever become seedlings or whole plants. I personally don’t see a problem with taking a few seeds (less than 10% of the production, preferably much less), if the plant is not rare in the area. That’s certainly a LOT better than taking adult perennial plants that have survived all the problems seeds and seedlings face. Don’t collect from rare plants or from native plants with difficult requirements for germination and growth (e.g. orchids) unless you have the skills to meet those requirements.
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