Lets back track these plants and lets give ramp the benefit of the doubt. He has done nothing wrong himself and I hope his plants are happy in his collection for years to come.
Ramp, "legally imported" is vague, and I think the issue some members are having is that you are using that language in a blanket manner that appears to cover the entire journey of not only your plants, but the mother plant(s) from which these seedlings came.
The only known location from which this species comes is in Laos. While possible, I am not aware of any populations in Thailand nor are any of the larger and well known Thai nurseries and Paph collectors. It is highly doubtful that Laos issued a permit to collect plants of rungsuriyanum and a CITIES to export the plants. That being said, almost every large Thai nursery and Paph collector in that country has quantities of this species and we can see photos of their plants on Facebook on a pretty regular basis. I do know, because I have tried, that Thailand is not giving CITIES to export rungsuriyanum. Thailand does, however, give CITIES to export Paph hybrids. The plant inspectors at the airports in Bangkok and ChiangMai are knowledgable as to orchids but occasionally somethings gets past their watchful eye. The last plant inspector I spoke with in ChiangMai told me in straight terms they are looking out for this species and not allowing exports of rungsuriyanum.
Therefore, while it may be true that your plants are legally imported, and there is no reason to doubt that, it is not possible that they are legally imported from Thailand as rungsuriyanum, nor is it possible that your plants, or the mother plants used to produce them, were ever legally collected and exported from Laos in the first place. What is likely is that these plants were exported from Thailand with a CITIES as Paph hybrids making your assertion of legal importation correct. If this is in dispute ask for a copy of a Thai issued CITIES with the name rungsuriyanum on it. You won't find one.
I am not going to take this thread on a tangent. Everyone who reads the posts on this site regularly knows I do not support CITIES as constructed and are well aware of the methods some of the larger nurseries use to legalize otherwise illegal plants. I would guess that each and every person on this list either has plants that were illegal at some point from the jungle source or are derived from illegally collected and exported plants and to think otherwise is naive. How many of you have kovachii hybrids from Ecuadorian nurseries? How many of you have sanderianum or anitum hybrids with Taiwanese plants in the background? Are we so naive as to assume Peru, Malaysia and the Philippines gave special permits to collect the mother plants to these nurseries followed by a CITIES to remove them from their respective countries? But none of that matters because they were imported "legally" and we happily buy up all these legally imported plants.
Ramp, good for you. Keep your plants and I wish you many years of good growing. Rungsuriyanum is something special. Everyone should have this species in their collection.
Best,
The problem in the first place is:
1 - the plants were discovered in Thailand in between a bunch of P. canhii from Laos. How they got to Thailand in the first place is a grey zone.
2 -, they also seem to grow around the North Western border of Vietnam.
3 - Some plants were shipped to Germany for identification and description of this species.
I know and saw that in Vietnam,masses of all kinds of orchids are harvested from the wild, still at this moment. When I was there,they were sold all around ont he sidewalk, sold in bundles by the poor people. If you don't believe me, do a YouTube search, even there Vietnamese are proud to offer bundles of orchid species,no one seem to mind this. Do stripping nature from all types of orchids.
Do I like it? NO!, Can I do something about it? No! These people do this to get a bit of money for food but don't understand the consequences for nature. After all,you still can see that nature is still recovering from what of the Americans did there,many years ago.
Smart Thai venders, buy up some of this vast amount of collected plants and ship them out, sometimes they just drive over the borders. Vietnam and Laos are not that fussed,specially when it comes to border control. As long as you got some money in your pocket, border control is OK with it in many places. I don't respect this, but it is what it is. Everywhere in the world, people use back-doors to get what they want. Now if someone, wherever, takes the time to pollinate, germinate and grow a species on, rare or not,and exports these with the right permits, that I can respect.
How the original plants arrived in Germany, also is in the grey area but this species is pollinated and grown on there too, making these plants legal in Europe.
It's odd that such a rampant comes from the US and specially to my post! Not seen on other posts on this forum.
The US is known all over to have the most illegal (exotic) animals and plants (orchids) in the world. Look at P. kovachii!
Maybe it's time to stop posting on this forum and even leave it.
It certainly not pleasant to be accused of illegality when it's not.
No more for me or I might be shot eventually!
