Boris
12-13-2004, 02:16 PM
Man I gotta get some Cycads. They sound like an awesome plant. Some of these guys sell for over $25k.
Money in the bank (http://www.kansascity.com/mld/miamiherald/living/home/gardening/10250508.htm?1c)
Crooks, collectors preying on cycads
Stumpy, palm-like plants have become the favorite target of international thieves and collectors.
BY GEORGIA TASKER
gtasker@herald.com
They look like stumpy, thick-headed palms. They predate the dinosaurs. Yet despite their less than showy appearance, cycads are so prized by collectors that they have become the nexus of a worldwide smuggling ring.
Even microchips embedded in he stems have failed to deter thieves, hired by a shadowy network of collectors to procure the endangered plants.
''At this point in time, there is no more valuable plant than a cycad,'' said Jason Cubrock, cycad specialist at Quail Botanical Garden in Encinitas, Calif., which lost 21 valuable cycads to thieves in 2003.
The latest major theft occurred at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables sometime over Labor Day weekend, as South Florida was buttoned up awaiting Hurricane Frances. Thieves apparently jumped the fence at the garden, which the staff had been ordered to evacuate, and made off with 33 cycads worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was the second major theft of cycads from Fairchild in two years; 40 were stolen in 2002.
Cycads are cone-bearing plants, or primitive gymnosperms, like pines and ginkgo trees. They developed more than 200 million years ago, long before flowering plants. Close to half of the 185 species of cycads worldwide are threatened with extinction.
Fairchild began collecting cycads when the garden opened in 1936, and some of the stolen plants had grown there for decades.
''Clearly, someone knows our collection,'' said Mike Maunder, Fairchild's director. So far, the missing plants have not been recovered.
SEVERAL SUSPECTS
Fairchild's latest cycad theft was immediately put on the Internet. There are clues and suspects, but ''there is no smoking gun,'' said Bruce Greer, chairman of the garden's board of trustees.
Missing: Dioon purpusii from Oaxaca, Mexico, a four-inch-high plant with dull gray green leaves.
Missing: a six-inch offset, or pup, that came from one of the last known Wood's cycads in existence, in South Africa.
Missing: Natal grass cycad, so unusual that for many years it was thought to be a fern.
After the Fairchild cycad heist of 2002, Quail Garden; the University of California Los Angeles arboretum, and author Loran Whitelock, who wrote the comprehensive book The Cycads, were robbed in rapid succession.
The cycad underworld is much like the underworld of art collection, fueled by wealthy black-market collectors who go to great lengths to acquire a rare specimen.
''I can't imagine anyone else who will spend the kind of money these people are spending for plants,'' says John Donaldson, cycad expert at the National Botanic Gardens in South Africa. ``If you're a landscaper, you won't spend $10,000 to $20,000 on a big plant.''
THREE KEY STATES
In the United States, black market cycads most often end up in Florida, California and Hawaii because they can be grown outside, said Maunder. ``There are collectors who are legitimate and those who are shady in all three [states].''
As the population of wild cycads decreases, prices rise. The international effort to catch the thieves involves U.S. Fish and Wildlife officers, park rangers, police and agriculture inspectors.
''Cycads are unusual and there are a number of rare and endangered species that are hard to come by,'' said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Roddy Gable. ``So collectors who have to have them must have every last one of them.''
In a sting operation in 2002, Fish and Wildlife caught six men from four countries selling stolen cycads in California.
NETWORK UNCOVERED
Law enforcement agencies uncovered a network in the United States, South Africa, Australia and Zimbabwe that smuggled plants mainly from Africa into Australia and the U.S., Donaldson said.
''Relatively few of the people involved were successfully prosecuted,'' he said. ``Many are still involved in the cycad trade.''
DNA fingerprinting can be used to identify individual plants and determine if they have come from a registered mother plant or were stolen from the wild, Donaldson said. The cost of large-scale fingerprinting will be assessed.
As venerable as cycads are in the plant kingdom, they cannot adapt to disappearing habitat and humans who plunder their remaining populations in the wild.
South Florida's single native cycad, Zamia integrifolia, or coontie, once grew by the thousands in the pinelands before pioneers discovered how to make a starch called arrow root from the underground stems. Tons of the plants were harvested until so few were left that the industry had to shut down. Today, development has seen to it that the coontie's survival in the wild is as dicey as that of South Africa's Encephalartos species, among the most endangered of all plants.
TWO EXTINCTIONS
In the past few years, two South African cycads have become extinct because they were stolen from the wild: Encephalartos brevifoliolatus and Encephalartos nubimontanus. This partly because they grow in remote areas where few people can witness thefts and ''partly that [thieves] can use helicopters to get into remote areas,'' Donaldson said.
''A whole bunch more really are on the brink,'' he said. They include cycads with fewer than 100 individuals, such as Encephalartos msinganus, E. latifrons, and E. inopinus.
Since it is illegal to collect, import or export endangered cycads, their value varies with the collector.
''A cycad, like any collector's item, can be $20 to $20 million,'' said Whitelock, who collected cycads before trade in endangered species was banned in 1973. ``Encephalartos latifrons, hirsutus and inopinus are in demand. These are things that don't come available very often, so there's always a collector looking for them. One friend told me he'd been offered $25,000 for his latifrons.''
Whitelock has more than 1,000 cycads in his private collection, which has been willed to the Huntington Botanical Garden in San Marino, Calif.
He had an open house recently for a palm society, and a cycad along his driveway was taken, even with friends posted around the garden to keep watch.
Money in the bank (http://www.kansascity.com/mld/miamiherald/living/home/gardening/10250508.htm?1c)
Crooks, collectors preying on cycads
Stumpy, palm-like plants have become the favorite target of international thieves and collectors.
BY GEORGIA TASKER
gtasker@herald.com
They look like stumpy, thick-headed palms. They predate the dinosaurs. Yet despite their less than showy appearance, cycads are so prized by collectors that they have become the nexus of a worldwide smuggling ring.
Even microchips embedded in he stems have failed to deter thieves, hired by a shadowy network of collectors to procure the endangered plants.
''At this point in time, there is no more valuable plant than a cycad,'' said Jason Cubrock, cycad specialist at Quail Botanical Garden in Encinitas, Calif., which lost 21 valuable cycads to thieves in 2003.
The latest major theft occurred at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables sometime over Labor Day weekend, as South Florida was buttoned up awaiting Hurricane Frances. Thieves apparently jumped the fence at the garden, which the staff had been ordered to evacuate, and made off with 33 cycads worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was the second major theft of cycads from Fairchild in two years; 40 were stolen in 2002.
Cycads are cone-bearing plants, or primitive gymnosperms, like pines and ginkgo trees. They developed more than 200 million years ago, long before flowering plants. Close to half of the 185 species of cycads worldwide are threatened with extinction.
Fairchild began collecting cycads when the garden opened in 1936, and some of the stolen plants had grown there for decades.
''Clearly, someone knows our collection,'' said Mike Maunder, Fairchild's director. So far, the missing plants have not been recovered.
SEVERAL SUSPECTS
Fairchild's latest cycad theft was immediately put on the Internet. There are clues and suspects, but ''there is no smoking gun,'' said Bruce Greer, chairman of the garden's board of trustees.
Missing: Dioon purpusii from Oaxaca, Mexico, a four-inch-high plant with dull gray green leaves.
Missing: a six-inch offset, or pup, that came from one of the last known Wood's cycads in existence, in South Africa.
Missing: Natal grass cycad, so unusual that for many years it was thought to be a fern.
After the Fairchild cycad heist of 2002, Quail Garden; the University of California Los Angeles arboretum, and author Loran Whitelock, who wrote the comprehensive book The Cycads, were robbed in rapid succession.
The cycad underworld is much like the underworld of art collection, fueled by wealthy black-market collectors who go to great lengths to acquire a rare specimen.
''I can't imagine anyone else who will spend the kind of money these people are spending for plants,'' says John Donaldson, cycad expert at the National Botanic Gardens in South Africa. ``If you're a landscaper, you won't spend $10,000 to $20,000 on a big plant.''
THREE KEY STATES
In the United States, black market cycads most often end up in Florida, California and Hawaii because they can be grown outside, said Maunder. ``There are collectors who are legitimate and those who are shady in all three [states].''
As the population of wild cycads decreases, prices rise. The international effort to catch the thieves involves U.S. Fish and Wildlife officers, park rangers, police and agriculture inspectors.
''Cycads are unusual and there are a number of rare and endangered species that are hard to come by,'' said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Roddy Gable. ``So collectors who have to have them must have every last one of them.''
In a sting operation in 2002, Fish and Wildlife caught six men from four countries selling stolen cycads in California.
NETWORK UNCOVERED
Law enforcement agencies uncovered a network in the United States, South Africa, Australia and Zimbabwe that smuggled plants mainly from Africa into Australia and the U.S., Donaldson said.
''Relatively few of the people involved were successfully prosecuted,'' he said. ``Many are still involved in the cycad trade.''
DNA fingerprinting can be used to identify individual plants and determine if they have come from a registered mother plant or were stolen from the wild, Donaldson said. The cost of large-scale fingerprinting will be assessed.
As venerable as cycads are in the plant kingdom, they cannot adapt to disappearing habitat and humans who plunder their remaining populations in the wild.
South Florida's single native cycad, Zamia integrifolia, or coontie, once grew by the thousands in the pinelands before pioneers discovered how to make a starch called arrow root from the underground stems. Tons of the plants were harvested until so few were left that the industry had to shut down. Today, development has seen to it that the coontie's survival in the wild is as dicey as that of South Africa's Encephalartos species, among the most endangered of all plants.
TWO EXTINCTIONS
In the past few years, two South African cycads have become extinct because they were stolen from the wild: Encephalartos brevifoliolatus and Encephalartos nubimontanus. This partly because they grow in remote areas where few people can witness thefts and ''partly that [thieves] can use helicopters to get into remote areas,'' Donaldson said.
''A whole bunch more really are on the brink,'' he said. They include cycads with fewer than 100 individuals, such as Encephalartos msinganus, E. latifrons, and E. inopinus.
Since it is illegal to collect, import or export endangered cycads, their value varies with the collector.
''A cycad, like any collector's item, can be $20 to $20 million,'' said Whitelock, who collected cycads before trade in endangered species was banned in 1973. ``Encephalartos latifrons, hirsutus and inopinus are in demand. These are things that don't come available very often, so there's always a collector looking for them. One friend told me he'd been offered $25,000 for his latifrons.''
Whitelock has more than 1,000 cycads in his private collection, which has been willed to the Huntington Botanical Garden in San Marino, Calif.
He had an open house recently for a palm society, and a cycad along his driveway was taken, even with friends posted around the garden to keep watch.