Oliver Sparrow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> spaketh thusly:
>It may be that I have missed something. I understand orchid movements to be
>limited under CITES to the movement of mature plants. Flasked seedlings are
>exempt, as are botanical specimens suitable for taxonomy, cut flowers and - if
>not explicitly, then how is this different from a cut flower? - seed capsules.
The exemption for flasked seedlings is not recognized by the
United States. Europe and other countries may recognize the "washing"
of "illegal" (?) plants by passage through sterile culture, but not
the United States. Ergo, plants exported without CITES permits that
are propagated in sterile culture that are then brought into the
United States are considered "fruit of the poison tree," and they and
their subsequent progeny are considered illegal. Except, perhaps,
their hybrids- which are also exempted under the treaty.
Seed capsules are not exempt, except for vanilla (which is
specifically exempted). Seed capsules are considered plant parts and,
therefore, moving seed capsules of Appendix I plants is not
recommended- ditto with live seed. For the cycad people, this is non-trivial.
>If so, absolutist debate about who has what seems a bit pointless, as these
>days the technology for artifical propagation is pretty well universal. One
>does not even need seeds: as most know, a root cap will do for a mericlone. I
>am sure that there are bits of a flower that could be obliged to recover their
>meristem potential with a hormonal nudge or two, and there you have absolutely
>legal shipments of whatever you want.
Would that paphs and phrags were capable of being delivered
by tissue culture, that would be an acceptable route. However, people
aren't going to jail for nasty bits of phalaenopsis of epidendrums
getting seizured [sic]. Reliable clonal propagation of paphs, save
for direct vegetative propagation by division, has yet to be
achieved- except for one report of protocorm multiplication in vitro-
which really isn't all that spectacular, you understand.
>The blanket ban on orchids seems to be a degree inane to me. I am absolutely
>agreed that specific showy species need protection, as do other species which
>attract too much human attention. The argument was that customs officers could
>not know an threatened species from anything else, but that they would
>recognise an orchid when they saw it. (A dubious proposition, perhaps.) Today,
>of course, Cytochrome C Oxidase (CCO) barcoding is cheap and straightforward,
>with the technology in place. Indeed, it would be equally easy to raise
>monoclonal antibodies to the key endangered species, and thus have a simple
>dipstick test to apply at entry that would detect the presence of a key
>protein from any of these, using a tiny tissue sample. Times have moved on.
And with (a minimum figure of) 70 species in the genus
paphiopedilum, some 70 dipstick tests would be performed- per plant-
upon import? Or perhaps it would be possible to knock it up to the
genus level- at which point is there any discrimination available
between hybrids and species? Back to the species level to see if it's
a hybrid. But would the hybrids cross-react and get flagged as species?
Even then, my understanding is that it's not really a matter
of taxonomy once the plants are recognized. A technician who was
awake during the appropriate bits of the PowerPoint presentation on
telling whale baleen from sea turtle belts notices some plants that
are out of sorts, at which point they're taken to a taxonomist who
keys them out on the basis of morphology. Or, if he's particularly
clever, reading the tag that is appended to the plant in question.
The above is not legal advice. In fact, the above isn't very
good advice. Most everyone who follows my advice ends up somewhere
nasty. My suggestion is not to do anything I recommend. Ever.
Quite a conundrum, that last statement, eh?
-AJHicks
Chandler, AZ
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