"Jungle Collected"?

[Lizgeo]

I have limited experience with jungle trekking, but for a few times, I saw lots of falling tree branches covered with orchids. I don't think those orchids could survive. You might argue that these wild orchids could be collected for market. Still, I am not sure about selling those wild orchids. Once it becomes a business, the greed will take over sooner or later. If the collecting license is only granted to a few reputable individuals, we might be able to save the orchids and not disturb the environment.

[stefpix]

In Mexico I have seen fallen branches as well and a very large fallen tree in a cement factory that had lots of Brassavolas that were burning in the sun. I went back 3 months later and that tree was still there with the orchids dying.

I met an Aztec guy that owns a plot of jungle and he has been taking fallen orchids and put them on trees by his orchard. Mostly Oncidiums and rat tail Oncidiums.

I met a woman that had a beautiful R. digbyana in her yard. I was some how disappointed to see that it was on a sawed off branch - it must have been taked as a whole specimen from the wild.

An old lady put a Myrmecophila on a tree in the street outside her home and it was doing great. it was a huge specimen, all green with happy roots on the trunk. It was doing better than those I have seen in the wild, where only the new pseudobulbs seem to do well and the old ones dry up.

I believe there in Quintana Roo Myrmecophilas and Brassavolas are very common and not endangered and I have seen them everywhere.

As many things in life you can not say something is good or bad, but it depends how you do it. I saw swaths of thick jungle being bulldozed to build a residential area for tourists.

[Lizgeo]

If a volunteer group could collect those in-danger orchids for sale, and profit is then directed to conservation, that would be the optimal, wouldn't it?

Glad to have this discussion here, it's a sensitive topic to all orchid lovers.

[zainal abidin]

I think should be allowed for the propagation as we know for the future generation we never know what will happen to this species at the original place, human population increasing, demand for the land for shelter is unavoidable, deforestation, logging all will contributes the extinction of orchids.