T I'm not sure you understood. The point of our collection is to support education and research. We make our materials freely available to researchers around the world. We do not horde our materials since we also share with other legitimate plant collections. In fact, we are also making our material available to the public through our sales. While I agree that the plants may be protected by having them propagated by private collectors around the world, such distribution would not serve the same purpose; e.g., researchers or people wishing to obtain documented material for breeding, etc., would have a much harder time locating what they need, and the level of data is likely to decrease. For example, even if your rare material were data based at the onset, the materials you distributed are likely to be eventually or gradually be 'disconnected' from these data. Perhaps we are talking about different purposes for collections. If you have valuable plants with provenance that you are willing to share, we would love to work with you. Paul Paul Licht, Director Univ. California Botanical Garden 200 Centennial Drive Berkeley, CA 94720 (510)-643-8999 http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu/ On 12/24/2011 8:44 PM, Tim Harvey wrote: > It is my, perhaps naive and over-optimistic goal, to have propagated and distributed most of the rare plants in my collection, so that ultimately it will not matter what happens to the parents. > > However, in the meantime, I simply do not understand why botanical institutions do not do the same. That it is POLICY at UCBG is simply unbelievable. That, surely, is not a place to send anything rare! What is the point of having the largest documented plant collection in the US if it sits there, awaiting a disaster of some kind to wipe it out? > > T > > >> Paul, >> >> You speak to one of the issues I have puzzled over, what happens to my >> collection when I am gone. > > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/ >