Paphiopedilum ooii

[UweM]

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!

That's a beautiful dream.

The CITES authorities will never allow that. Why were all Paphios put on Appendix I? There are no answers for that!

So it makes no sense to speculate about it!

 

[SelectOrchids]

Wondering if anyone in the west grows ooii yet?

plants and seedlings. They were legally exported from Malaysia a couple of times. Now it is not the easiest species to grow. It is not difficult, but simply slow.

As to why it is so rare, and more Paphiopedilum will be, it is simply not financially worthwhile to propagate a species and end up selling 2 plants here and 3 plants there. That's what is happening as well with species like bougainvilleanum. There is simply not enough demand to make its propagation worthwhile, after all. I did propagate it once, there were flasks offered, very few were sold, and the market is covered with the couple of sold flasks and 2-3 divisions, for at least 10 years. It is simply not worth the effort, except if someone wants to be generous and invest their own money to supply the market.

Workers have to be paid by hour, taxes have to be paid, sales taxes have to be paid, various kind of licences. If it is to sell 10 propagated plants of a species in Europe and America per year, it is simply suicidal ( been there, seen that...).

As for Asia they have ready access to mature wild plants, for which artificially propagated plants cannot compete with. The demand from Europe and the USA for wild plants or Paphiopedilum as well is ridiculously low, to non existent. In the USA, if any species sells more than 20 plant/species/year it is an absolute best seller, and I do not mean delusional people who think they can buy 50 plants and resell them to make a 'big profit'. The same for Europe. There are a handful of exceptions, but they are rare to the extreme. The market in the Western World is simply non-existent.

The gigantic batches of all wild collected paphs that are offered on Facebook are not intended for Westerners, that are very poor financially compared to most people in Asia as of now, but for the local market. It is more speculative, they buy, split the batches, and find the next one to sell them to and make profit. In the meantime, they will select a couple of top quality plants for very rich hobbyists ( none in Europe or the US can afford the local prices paid in Asia, selected wild exul at 500-2000US/growth, micranthum album at 500-2500US/growth, and so on), and that's all. Note ironically that some Europeans and Americans, quite infatuated at a point, pompously say ' we will NOT buy wild plants, then the trade will stop'. Only problem, they do not realize that the whole of the USA/Europe represents maybe 1% of the total Paphiopedilum species market.