Nobody Screws With The Giant Magic Orchid

[trof]

Mark Morford, SF Gate
Posted with permission of the author.

A Virginia man pleaded not guilty to charges he illegally imported one of the most prized orchids ever found after buying it at a roadside flower stand in a Peruvian mountain village.

James M. Kovach, who brought the orchid to a botanical gardens in Sarasota in June 2002, faces a maximum six years in prison and a $350,000 fine if he's convicted of smuggling and possessing the flower. Orchids such as the one Kovach bought are protected under the Convention on Int'l Trade Species, which forbids the trade of certain plants from country to country. Kovach's find of the peach-and-purple flower -- twice the size of others of its kind -- has been called the most significant in the orchid world in the last 100 years.

Kovach took the orchid to the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, where scientists classified and named it for the man who brought it to them: Phragmipedium kovachii. Marie Selby, a top identifier of orchids, pleaded guilty last week to a misdemeanor charge of accepting and handling the flower, and the gardens agreed to pay a $5,000 fine. Horticulturist Wesley Higgins agreed to a plea deal specifying house arrest for six months, probation for a year and a $2,000 fine.

OK? Is that enough? Are you sufficiently slapped and stumped and baffled and shaking your head and sighing in tingly wonder and saying, holy Jesus crap, life is one weird tub of guacamole and I am all out of chips? Do you see?
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/a/2004/01/15/national2349EST0853.DTL

[wryter2000]

1. That may sound silly

CITES isn't used very intelligently in regards to orchids, but consider what it's fighting. There are, literally, dozens of species (probably hundreds -- we'll never know) that no longer exist in the wild because they've been collected by hobbyists. Expeditions in the 19th Century brought back orchids by the thousands (per expedition) to the great collections in England. The most beautiful orchid -- the cattleya -- came into England as packing material for other orchids.

It continues to this day. Hobbyists go into the wild and bring out anything they can find. They give each other tips on how to smuggle them back into the US. I overheard one at an orchid society meeting asking another to see if a relative could get a yellow lady's slipper orchid from the wild for her. Never mind that they're just about impossible to grow here.

It's deplorable. And with deforrestation in Central America, things are only getting worse. The Selby Botanical Garden is a fine research institution, and I hope this get plea bargained down, but the world's orchids are in tremendous danger.

[mitchtv]

2. not baffled at all

we could wipe out entire species iif they wnd up as collectables. A beautiful ornamental tree from the US south east Franklinia Almantaha sp? is extinct in the wild. Orchids are even more in jeopardy , due to their great beauty. Many parrots are also suffering from commerce.

[Benhurst]

3. Six years in prison and a $350,000 fine

sounds about right to me.

[catzies]

4. Here's the little darling. I love orchids.

[jimbo fett]

5. I hear they're great if you dry 'em and then smoke 'em.