Virgin Forest, Felled Forest, Burnt Forest

Voice-over

Cutting trees for the timber industry is big business. The logging companies sometimes influence politicians to change laws so they can harvest large trees from virgin forest.

Since the large trees in old forests are economically valuable, loggers hunt them aggressively. 

There is a conflict of interest between the short term economic goals of loggers and the longer term objectives of environmentalists.

Virgin Forest

The ecologist explains…

A virgin forest is an old forest that hasn’t been disturbed by human activity.

It is an ecosystem with a biodiversity of large and small trees, multi-layered canopies, fallen timber and woody debris.

Felled Forest

This provides material for microhabitats allowing mosses, fungi and seedlings to grow. Since it can take hundreds of years for a forest to recover, biodiversity is lost.

Cutting trees for the timber industry is big business. The logging companies sometimes influence politicians to change laws so they can harvest large trees from virgin forest.

Burnt Forest

And sometimes local people just burn off the forest so they can grow food.

(From Endangered Orchids, 2013)

Endangered Orchids

Voice-over

Orchids are often ostentatiously ornamented. Like the slipper orchid. But not all. Among the 25,000 orchid species, many are relatively muted, subtle and subdued. Like this one found in Northern Thailand.

The ecologist explains…

There are two main threats endangering plants in northern Thailand.

Orchids, like so many plant species, are collected, often illegally. Others have their habitats destroyed by logging, legal and illegal.

An Example of a Rare Orchid

Vanilla siamensis

This is Vanilla siamensis. Like many orchids, it is epiphytic; it lives on other plants. It’s not a parasite, it doesn’t damage the host, it just uses the trunk of a tree to grow on. Its environment is important to it. Its seeds need a fungus to get enough carbohydrates for growth until it can make its leaves, and it needs a special insect for its pollination. If any of these are missing from its environment, the orchid will not grow.

History of Endangered Plants

Hunting plants and removing them from their natural environment is not new. In Victorian times, hunters would collect rare plants, especially orchids for wealthy English collectors. In extreme cases, some orchid smugglers would destroy remaining plants and burn the environment to make the specimens more valuable due to scarcity.

What can we do?

• Multilateral agreements such as CITES can help to make it illegal to collect and transport rare plants.
• Schools can include ecology in their curricula. Teachers should make plant identification interesting.
• The tourism industry has a responsibility to make travellers aware of endangering plants. Take photos, not specimens, and don’t disturb the environment.
• Plant growers should develop an ethical sense of sustainable collecting.

 (from Endangered Orchids, 2013)

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Endangered Weeds

Swan Plant aka Milkweed

Greenfinger and Bluetooth walk around the garden.

Weeds. Milkweed. See? Break the stem and milk comes out.

You’ve got another kind of milkweed over here. Swan plants.

That’s for the butterflies.

Swan plant is also called milkweed. Asclepias fruiticosa. There’s heaps of plants in the Asclepias genus.

Asclepias?

After the Greek god of medicine, Asclepius.

________________

Voice-over

They name WEEDS after me? 
I'm HONORED.

“Weed” is a subjective expression. Implying something of an invasive nature.

Something invasive can scarcely be called “endangered.”

Is “endangered weed” thus an oxymoron?

To developers unsympathetic to biodiversity, any plant could be a weed.

I propose a new new category to counter the depredations of human commerce.

“Endangered weeds.”

Milkweeds, a big family, 140 described. Noted for nectar, butterfly gardening, flowers. They have a surprising number of human uses too: medicinal, insulation, sweetening, cords, rubber.

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