Paphiopedilum ooii

[BrucherT]

Seeing these pics breaks my heart. There’s a thread here on the species describing it as extremely rare in 2009. These are current pics.

and why? Why not just a couple seed pods, which couldn’t than satisfy the trade in this ugly duckling, forever.

is there nothing to be done?

 

[Tony]

Has CITES allowed it to be exported? Doesn't do any good to collect seed if no lab will touch it and it can't be sold anywhere. This is the unfortunate reality of CITES, stuff gets traded openly in Asia where nobody gives a **** and the rest of the world has no legal path to propagate it artificially.

 

[Ozpaph]

DONT BUY THESE PLANTS.
If there's no market there's no collecting.

 

[BrucherT]

DONT BUY THESE PLANTS.
If there's no market there's no collecting.

Oh HELL NO. I wouldn’t. But someone will or they’ll just die. Not even carefully collected.

 

[BrucherT]

I just don’t understand it. I know people are hungry but for the prices charged, we could feed those folks and inspire them to protect these plants. I do see that rungsuriyianum is showing up now as seedlings. I guess that’s good even if they’re illegal. No idea the status of canhilii in cultivation but yup, still obvious wild plants on eBay. Saw nataschae on eBay a few weeks ago. Just can’t believe it. Those jungle plants don’t do well and then we lose it all. Does anybody know his bougainvillieum is doing? This post I copied describes roths and dayanum as “still plentiful” but also noted that someone “places an order for several hundred plants every 6 months, it’s amazing to see.” Also mentions big plants of natural hybrid x-kimballianum ripped out. My heart just crushes. I know CITES is controversial, I don’t understand why they won’t compromise and encourage seed propagation. No one wants a jungle plant that just dies on them.

 

[emydura]

That is a depressing sight. I dare say that many of the paphs species will be extinct in the wild within a few decades. There seems little hope.

I This post I copied describes roths and dayanum as “still plentiful”.

I find that hard to believe. According to IUCN they are both on the verge of extinction in the wild. Paph rothschildianum has never been common. Even before it was collected, it was restricted to 3 or so populations around Mount Kinabalu, and even here it was only found in disturbed areas due to landslides etc where it got good light. As the canopy thickens, rothschildianum dies out. It is restricted to a very niche and limited habitat.


roths

https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/43322055/43327969


dayanum

https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/43320248/43327819

 

[Phaladdict]

These pics are something you see everyday from many Asian orchid fb contact, collection these days has become rampant and predatory mentality (collect all the colony even if order is for much less plants then often excedence die in piles)prevail , i have to say thath at least in europe every collection have at least a few collected plants as for many species bs are often if not always jungle collected(ooi is an example but also all cahnii and rungs until very recently, papilio laoticus etc etc) no matter if you know or not when you buy it, just saying....

 

[Rockbend]

Unfortunately, collectors are going to collect every week because they want a pay check.

Are there still piles of concolor and niveum burning in the sun at the Bangkok flea market every weekend? Every local grower has had all they could ever want decades ago, and non-locals can't get them out of the country. Yet the collectors are in the woods of Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam hunting for plants to sell all year long.

 

[Phaladdict]

Unfortunately, collectors are going to collect every week because they want a pay check.

Are there still piles of concolor and niveum burning in the sun at the Bangkok flea market every weekend? Every local grower has had all they could ever want decades ago, and non-locals can't get them out of the country. Yet the collectors are in the woods of Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam hunting for plants to sell all year long.

Indeed, even if they can have still the paycheck limiting a bit themselves no need to wipe out entire colonies to sell a fraction of the plants and let die the rest in piles, also they don't make bargain anymore with the last already screened and not so good plants, give them their price or let die, thath is the average reasoning, there is also a reason to collect all so they have the exclusive for a while or even forever depending species.... I mean I understand the need to feed family and have smart TV and all, I don't understand the predatory way as I can name many species wyped out in a few collections.... Some wiped out colonies are famous like thath phal javanica by a famous nursery....

 

[troy]

They will all be plucked from the wild and will die on the market floor, whether they are exported or not

 

[KateL]

Depressing

 

[Hien]

They will all be plucked from the wild and will die on the market floor, whether they are exported or not

There is a famous orchid grower in Vietnam, who told the story that when hangianum was first discovered in Vietnam, the price was minimum some thousands of dollar in Europe and it was so rare in European countries, yet at the same time , the sellers from Vietnam highland could not even get rid of the plants in Vietnam, every week , sacks of plants came down to the city, he had to buy so many to save them , because otherwise they would just die if the wholesalers could not find new owners who would want them .
He paid about 20,000 Vietnam Dong (equal to 1.43 US dollar exchange rate for the year 1999 ) for 1kg which he said depending on the size of the plants , average 35 hangianum plants a kg (but these hangianum are big mature plants) so it was 4.08 US cents a plant. In the end, he had to get a big warehouse to store all of the plants he saved, which were 100,000 hangianum plants (it was tough for him, because 4,000 US dollar was a lot money there and then , Vietnamese did not make that much of money 20 years ago).
Then when they started to flower , he sent an employee carry them on an ox drawn cart around the city to sell them off. Nobody wanted them even in flower. At the time Vietnamese didn't care about slipper orchids , even today they still prefer dendrobiums (go figure)
Then, artificially seed sown & cultivated hangianum plants & hangianum hybrids (they look beautiful uniform in size and meticulous leaves ) were available at the last NYC orchid show at Rockefeller center (was it in 2007 ? someone may remember the exact year that this big international show no longer organized !!!), I really don't remember the price anymore, perhaps 60 or 80 dollar a plant , I was so thrilled to see them at the show, I bought 20 plants of just the hangianum species alone, plus many of the hang hybrids . So many plants from that show, It took me many trips to bring them home. Imagine had I live in Vietnam , I could use that same amount of money to save 39,215 hangianum plants from dying or nearly half of the contain in his warehouse.
By the way , Vietnamese start to make money now, and the rich ones are very rich, and they start to fancy orchids , now there is a cut section from a wild mother plant with two tiny dendrobium anosmum keiki buds a few millimeter not even rooted yet is bidded for 3,500,000,000 Vietnamese dong =150,946 dollars . I think they start to resemble Japanese in this aspect minute 0:35 to minute 0:54

how about the charity auction for this tiny 9 cm (3.6 inch) anosmum for 1,200,000,000 VN dong or 51,741 US dollar

Do these prices remind anyone of the "DUTCH TULIP CRAZE" ? granted there is a time span of 20 years , still a 4 cents mature hangianum versus 151,000 dollar 2 milimeter anosmum starting buds
just a note for the metric system users, a comma in dollar is another thousand and the period is the cut off for the cents behind, so for the price above it is 3.5 billion VN dong or 151 thousand US dollars (I think your system use the period between the thousand , and the comma before the cents)

 

[troy]

......sending the plants to another country would be detrimental to the plant population lol...........

 

[Camellkc]

I note the post on facebook also and had collected some information from my Malaysian friend who lives near mount kinabalu. This batch of ooii contains around 100 mature plants that was collected around week's ago. They are originally collected in clumps but has already divided into individual plants by the hunter for ease of selling. My friend said that this species is popular in orchid selling market owning to the rareness in the collection market and seedlings are rarely available now, in particular for Asian and Western Countries. Everyone want to try but this needs extremely special care for thrive. I think more than 90% of them will die eventually.

This species is now extremely rare in the habitat. My friend told me that wild plants are not common that the native hunter could only collect in 6-12 month's interval, since the cliffs that many ooii population grow are normally high and sharp. I think many paphio hobbyists are interested in it but legal plants are usually extremely expensive and lack of supply, that is one of the major reasons that it is still so popular nowadays, even many of them knows they will easily die under artificial cultural environment.

 

[Tony]

What makes ooii more difficult to grow than a typical multi?

 

[DrLeslieEe]

The CITES is in dire needs to be reformed to allow control collection and lab propagation for distribution and conservation. It has been shown to work with Phragmipedium kovachii successfully. And can be done for ooii, rungsuriyanum and the likes of which the market demands. One pod contains thousands of seeds that can satisfy the orchidophiles in less than a year. This will put the looting and piracy out of business within a couple years. CITES needs to wake up and smell the coffee!

 

[troy]

Thank you dr. Leslie, well said!!

 

[NYEric]

Unless a capable collector gathers and cultivates the plants all of these species are doomed. The lack of capable labs is the problem.