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In the dry forest this little ET appeared, poked its nose out to see why we were making so much noise, it is a small nocturnal lemur One of the nicest lemurs in madagascar In a remote corner, four baobabs. A variety that will be extinct because they are the last four! A parrot used to eat their seeds and by going through its stomach, they were abble to germinate. That variety of parrot is extinct! Scientists have tried to germinate the seeds without succes for the moment.

Hello,, I left the cold of the capital to go west. beautiful trip on horrible roads. This first pic is taken only 220 km from Antananarivo, but the temperature is 12°C higher, here it is summer, and there, winter. The river is called Tsiribihina, and goes through the tsingy of Bemarah where I will take you. Hope you enjoy the drive.

does anyone knows if there are different varieties of CIDP ? as there are with Chamaerops humilis ( var. argentea & var. humilis )

Tom, I think you should just listen to those who know what they're talking about, who live in the areas where these things happen or have dealt with the situations presented. Not all of those species were examples used to prove that wild seed collection has merit. That orchid can't be collected. But I tell you that there are many many more undocumented cases where those orchids have been found and the area has been built on. I stand by my argument that habitat destruction is the main cause of extinctions, not responsible palm seed collectors. Orchid collectors who you have drawn your strong prejudices from, are another story again and do destroy species, although even then, if managed correctly, they could help endangered species in my view. I think we'll just have to agree to disagree and move on. I don't wish you any ill will, or anything like that. Basically both of us care about the environment and love our plants, so we have that in common. All the best with growing your palms, orchids, Daturas and Brugmansias in Seattle. I'm sure that would have it's own unique challenges. How about some pictures? We'd love to see some. Best regards Tyrone

looks like a satsuma , mmmmmmm!

copy tks for the info! i hope they are not post mortem seeds though

whats pm?

oh ya i like the colors!!

Agree with you David. Tom, you put too much belief into documents. Many things never get documented. To say my question has basically no relevance is burying ones head in the sand. I'm sorry. Best regards Tyrone

Tom, once again you did NOT answer the question, or prove anything with your replies. They are all typical hypothetical government style responses we seem to get from you. You are dodging the hard questions. You did not reply to my question regarding whether you still have your orchid collection. May I assume that you still do and that you have rare and endangered individuals in your collection. You likely would have, considering you have collected for 25 years as you said. Am I right? There is quite a difference in the rare orchid collecting trade and the rare palm seed collecting trade which I'm sure you know. Let me explain to those who may not. Orchids are incredibly difficult to propagate from seed. The seed is a very fine dust that needs a symbiotic relationship from a very specific fungus to grow. Most hobbiests simply do not have the facilities or expertise to propagate from this fine dust seed. In fact the seed gets attacked by wild fungi without perfect sterility as quickly as it grows. Enter now the illegal Orchid trade in which many orchids are on CITES 1 classification. This bans all International trade between member nations to the treaty. Even owning the plant in the US for example could see you in trouble with the law. The illegal orchid trade is simply horrible. Do you think that the illegal smugglers wait for a specific species to flower in the wild and they go and collect the fine dust seed in special sterile environments to send out to illegal orchid collectors overseas. No way. That's way too hard and probably wouldn't work anyway, although it would be dead easy to smuggle a tiny packet of dust. No, they don't do that, they take bulbils, or cuttings or WHOLE PLANTS. Also they don't just take one, THEY TAKE THEM ALL. THIS IS A QUICK WAY TO DESTROY A SPECIES IN THE WILD. I can imagine that they would use the argument, "well the government is allowing the forest to be cut down so I'm just saving the species from the government", while they sell the specimens for huge profits in the black market in the US for example. This form of reasoning is nonsense, and I totally agree with your arguments in regard to the illegal orchid trade, however even these illegal orchid traders may have a shred of truth in their argument because governments in countries like Indonesia do not care about the environment at all. However wholesale stripping an area of all living specimens is NOT CONSERVATION either. Now lets look at palms in comparison to orchids. Palms propagate very easily from seed compared to orchids. In general the parent tree/s is/are looked after by the custodians of the land (eg in Madagascar by law, that is the villagers) if there is some sort of economic value realised by these custodians. These are not stupid people. Often a bit of education is all they need to provide some care. Before education they probably look at most palms as the same thing, and concluded that their are many of them in their parcel of land. So when they needed to cut a palm down for some food or timber or to extend their rice field they may not have concluded cutting down a few palms as a great loss, when in fact they may have been cutting down the last specimens on Earth. These are the people that collect. By nature, they will protect the source of their income. Do you think that they're so stupid that they'll cut that tree down for it's seeds, or harvest every single one to sell and not plant at least some back or allow some to grow where they decide to grow after falling from the tree. Give them some credit!!!!!!!!!!! Most of these areas now lack the dispersal agents necessary to move the species around and need human intervention. Yes they may work in with Kew's efforts, but Kew does not have unlimited resources either. They must rely on the good nature of people, and I tell you, miraculously, these type of people still exist. This is Kew's approach, and I agree with them wholeheartedly. But Kew is not involved with all such efforts in Madagascar. In addition these sort of economic remunerations for the local custodians would not exist without international trade in seed. There is very little local Madagascan demand for seed, and even less disposable income. Habitat destruction goes on unabated. In the third world where most of our collectable species come from, big western mining companies and agricultural concerns work in with corrupt governments to do as they please. As undesirable as that is, it happens, and species would be lost completely if it wasn't for ex situ populations (notice I said "populations" not "specimens"). So from this alone you can see that the rare palm seed trade is quite different to the illegal orchid trade which ships live orchids across the world, often leaving nothing in the wild. You can't dig up a fruiting Dypsis carlsmithii from the wild and put it in your backpack, wrap it up and post it to another part of the world. It's physically impossible. You can with a mature orchid though. Most orchids are epiphytes so you don't even need a shovel to remove them. I wonder how many orchid specimens are in official government collections that had been illegally obtained thereby aiding and abetting the illegal activity and destruction of the planet. So you have failed to convince me that collecting palm seed is bad for the species involved, or that government and institutional efforts are all that is necessary for palm conservation. Not even Kew takes that extreme line. I agree that things can and do go wrong, but neither side of this debate has a 100% solution. The government can mess things up and collectors can do the same. But we knew that at the beginning of this whole thread. Best regards Tyrone

Tom, you have got to be joking. Everyone who is not completely blind can see forests all over the world vanishing at record speed to oil palm or soy bean plantations, pastures, for timber, or just burnt down for the heck of it, and you are actually telling us that governments are saving endangered plants from those terrible, terrible seed poachers that are responsible for it all? Conservation programs are at best a fig leaf to make reality seem not quite as bad as it is, at least "we are actually doing something". Best, TOBY

"Answer this one question. "What do we do with an endangered species when the habitat it has is being cut down? That is the real situation in so many parts of the world." " No you did NOT answer that question at all. Ignore the Bus Station Orchid which exists in 33 other locations. Who is collecting it anyway? It was never under collection pressure. I only brought up that case to show how hypocritical governments can be, not provide a case for collection versus habitat destruction. To be honest most of the time that orchid doesn't even show above ground. Hardly something with collection appeal. Instead take the situation in Madagascar where rainforest is being decimated without halt. Species ARE still being wiped out!!!! Answer the question, because you believe you have THE answers. On another note do you still have your orchid collection?

Tom, I'll keep it brief. In regards to Tahina. You put too much weight on details published in the media. Those articles had so many inaccuracies. Tahina was discovered on Palmtalk, thanks to Bruno Leroy a friend of Xavier Metz. Bruno is a palm enthusiast like the rest of us. That article just talked about the 1000 seed going into the seedbank. It doesn't talk about the many more seed that went around the world. Did Kew deliberate with all the botanical gardens directly across the world. No. The botanical gardens across this country got this species not directly from Kew, but from Palm enthusiasts thanks to RPS. Believe me I know. Tom never once did I say that RPS did not wild collect. You initially tried to put across that RPS were a sole wild collection company when they're not. I also did not condone the action of the Wodyetia tree cutters. You still have not actually provided any meaningful answer to - what do we do with an endangered species when the habitat it has is being cut down? What is your answer to that? That is the real situation in so many parts of the world. That is the one governments CAN fix. But your zero collection regime makes no sense in that case. A bulldozed forest is a total failure. Best regards Tyrone

Tom, I'll keep it brief. I never said that seed collectors did not endanger Wodyetia. What they did was terrible and they knew it. Where the plants were situated was in a place where the usual species extinguishers except maybe mining would never have touched them. The government ignored the issue for too long, then got involved in a knee jerk reaction after the damage had been done, by blanket banning the export of seed. In that way they failed because they are responsible for what happens in their area of jurisdiction. They run the judicial system remember. They wanted the problem to go away, but it didn't. Did the QLD government care about Wodyetia? I doubt it. But once the embarrasing situation hit the papers and 60 minutes they had to be seen to do something. The whole situation could have been done much better involving the ex situ plantings. QLD and Australia had many Botanic Gardens that could have become involved from the out set. The local palm community were lobbying the government to improve the situation by protecting the remaining trees and getting involved in growing plants for reintroduction back into the wild. They were ignored. Again I'll reiterate and say that private collectors, no matter how small or how big CAN be a good thing for conservation. Best regards Tyrone

OK. I'm back. Bruce I agree with this statement. "I have been collecting and growing palms for many years and my only intent when I started was to grow endangered species and if I managed to get them to the seeding stage I would distribute seed to other people who had a similar interest, and some incentives to do this would have been nice but were not essential." This is my intention too. This topic has gotten really complex, like the actual problem of mass extinctions, conservation efforts and trouble in the Middle East for the last 1000 years. Tom, rather than focusing on what we disagree on, I will quickly focus on what we agree on. Basically we do care what happens to endangered species. Something has to be done. Ignoring a problem will not make it go away. I think we agree on those few things and that's a good thing. Where we differ is you think that ALL collectors of rare species are detrimental to those species. I think that well managed collecting is actually good for a species continued existence. We both agree that there have been many cases of unscrupulous collectors, but I don't believe that all collectors are unscrupulous. You believe that Governments should be the only ones permitted to work on conservation issues (ie propagate rare species), whereas I believe that while there have been some success stories, governments in the main mess things up, even though I feel that at the end of the day they hold the full responsibility for mass extinctions. They have the power but don't often utilise it. I stand by what I said about the Wodyetia issue and Bruce was a little bit closer to the action in Innisfail, so I'd believe him. The Wodyetia issue was a political embarrassment. Where the Wodyetia situation was probably not a good example was in the fact that it was in such an inaccessible area, that it is unlikely to come under any form of urban development for a very very long time. But if you look at areas on the east coast of Madagascar where rainforest is being destroyed all the time, leaving a species in situ without any ex situ propagation program is like sitting on the railway tracks and waiting for train to come along. Wodyetia wasn't on the train tracks and still isn't. It's one of the lucky ones. Virtually all Madagascan species as are species in many other parts of the world (eg Indonesia) are on borrowed time from deforestation, mining, and urbanisation. In the case of the now famous Bus Station Orchid, don't let the government documents fool you. This same government knocked down the last two remaining old growth Tuart trees in Capel. When they were legally challenged, these two trees were called the last piece of old growth "Tuart forest" in the world by those who didn't want them felled. This same government that you are singing praises for said that two trees does not constitute a "forest" and cut them down. But don't pick a wild flower from that area. They'll fine you for destroying the natural environment. Double standards, that's what I'm talking about. Governments are good at political "risk management", hence the documents you read singing there praises. Virtually all old growth forests in WA are gone. They deliberately leave corridors of what look like decent forest along the roads in the SW of Oz, but go a few hundred metres in past these corridors and you'll see a different story. The real one. Don't even get me started on Blue Gum plantations run by the Japanese in SW Oz. Anyway getting back to the point of this discussion, I believe collectors do have a useful role in conservation of the species. I keep going back to Kew Gardens approach with Tahina being a really good approach. They looked at the in situ and the ex situ situation. They did not leave collectors out of their considerations. Kew, a well respected conservation body, obviously thought that collectors were part of the conservation solution and so do I. I'm done now. Best regards Tyrone

While not trying to make this thread one long winded conversation I would like to say that in the case of H americaulis, the very reason for it's misidentification was apathy. No one bothered to look hard enough at the situation. H vaughnii which is also on the verge of extinction, only exists in cultivation in collectors gardens in Mauritius. It's long since extinct in the wild due to habitat destruction. H indica is virtually gone from the wild for the same reasons. Governments may be doing something now, but it's probably too late. Carpoxylon is a success story which encompasses the in situ and ex situ methods for conservation I mentioned earlier that Kew used with Tahina. Pritchardia viscosa-well we've talked a lot about it. I'm glad the state owns the spot now. What are the plans for ex situ seed distribution? Pritchardia napaliensis- the vandalism and theft is truly disgusting. But why paint all collectors as stooping to that level? Why pull RPS into this when you don't know what their source is? You are taking the "guilty until proved innocent" approach. The Bus Station vs Orchid situation was only resolved after public protest. They would have wiped them out if it wasn't such a hot topic. They're still surrounded by a large carpark and lots of human activity. They may very well go the same way as the Albany Pitcher Plant, which you can't find anywhere any more. C ernesti-augustii, don't really know the situation, but I would think there status would be closer to critical than vulnerable in the wild. Suggest Churches get more authentic and farm Phoenix dactylifera, or at least Phoenix roebellini. With the Wodyetia pillaging they were not merely taking seed. That wouldn't have been too much of an issue. They were felling trees for seed by chainsaw. Terrible. The Queensland Government banned the export of seed etc, but provided no controlled legal export alternative, that would have treated the trees as a manageable valuable resource. Also the Australian Federal Government did nothing. While illegal in Queensland, you could get the seed out of the state into the Northern Territory for example, and nothing could be done. Federal laws could have stopped that in it's tracks theoretically, in the same way that Western Australia has border quarantine stations. While that is all old history now, the demand for wild seed doesn't exist any more. The wild populations are safe. If the Australian Government had used the Kew gardens In situ/Ex situ approach like they did with Tahina, and had taken more of an active interest in the species, instead of just making a blanket ban, all of that mess could have been avoided. They probably would have made a profit from the exercise too. D decaryi, I don't know why anyone would want wild seed of this species anymore or D lutescens. That these are still being wild collected is baffling. Cultivated plants should now supply the world demand, and the wild ones should be left alone IMO. I'm going to leave this topic alone now. I've bored everyone enough. Best regards Tyrone

Tom, in my case I can honestly say I've done nothing worth regretting when it comes to attaining palm species. RPS does sell seeds from cultivation. Most seeds that fall in the wild do not germinate or lack the dispersal mechanisms to disperse them, as in a lot of cases the dispersers are long extinct. The worlds forests are basically damaged systems now. They don't work the way they used too. However what little is left is still worth protecting. Common sense should be used by anyone attaining propagation material. If we all used common sense there'd be no need for laws (CITES etc), because we'd all be operating under internal principles. However the reality is people are greedy. Digging up seedlings from the wild is just stupidly reckless especially if seed is available. I would like to know what governments ARE actually doing for conservation. Forgive me for being a cynic but I see very little attention to conservation issues by any government. The UN Biospheres in Madagascar as far as I know have all been abandoned. I wonder if Hyophorbe americaulis would be down to one individual if RPS and other seed companies were around in the 1970's. I wonder if H americaulis would not be totally extinct already if it wasn't for the Botanic Garden in Mauritius. The wild is not a safe haven for anything anymore. Best regards Tyrone

No offense taken Tom. These types of discussions are actually what the forum was set up for I think. Even our late moderater Robert Lee Riffle used to get involved in them, because the IPS is set up to educate and encourage palm conservation. You've brought up some good points. I think though it only takes one bad apple to spoil it for the rest of us. Those who stole and vandalised the enclosures obviously knew what they were, but were basically ignorant to the bigger picture or just didn't care. I think there are those who collect plants that are unusual purely for bragging rights. These people are unlikely to care about the future prospects for a species. Unfortunately you won't stop these sorts of people that easily. I think Kew Gardens approach is a good one. Efforts must be made to conserve and increase the in situ wild population first. Secondly the ex situ (collector) population should be supported too. Kew did this with Tahina, and spread the seed widely, but also reintroduced many seedlings back into the wild. It still has a very shaky existence though. At least if the in situ population gets destroyed the ex situ may have some healthy individuals in it. In regards to the Pritchardia issue, is the insitu and ex situ population being catered for? It doesn't sound like it. A higher percentage of seed will germinate given care in an ex situ setting than seed left to fend for itself in an in situ setting. Just letting seed drop to the ground when there are rats and other introduced species around will not help the species at all. Maybe when there were thousands of them fruiting they could handle a bit of rat predation, but when you're down to 3 individuals each seed is precious and needs help to germinate and grow on. There are many success stories that come from getting plants into cultivation though. Dypsis decaryi is a threatened species in the wild, yet just here in Perth there are hundreds of fruiting individuals that could supply the entire worlds need for seed. The same is true for Dypsis lutescens around the world. There are also quite a few P hillebrandii around my area that fruit profusely, yet in the wild it only exists on a small island away from rats and man. Who can forget Wodyetia which was pillaged beyond belief for it's seeds, but now has fruiting plants right through the world. Even the tracks up to those wild stands are grown over because of the zero demand for wild seed now. I don't know where RPS gets its P napaliensis seeds from. RPS does buy seed from private growers. Often this seed germinates better than wild seed as it's been cared for better by the owner. Wild seed can often be picked from the ground, or has gone past it's prime, or has to be taken from the forest on the back of a donkey, and takes time to get to an airport in a third world country before it's shipped to Munich, and then on to the grower. I know what you're saying about cross contamination between species even in a Botanic Garden. Botanic Gardens are no match for the real thing. Hopefully in the future we'll still have both, but to be honest, I doubt it. Best regards Tyrone

There is no question habitat destruction is bad, but I propose you are arguing at windmills where no one is disagreeing with you. The only question is 'is it relevant'? If we were having a discussion of, say, 'identity theft is good or bad?', and you added: 'Murder is much worse than identity theft; it makes identity theft pale in comparison'; would that be a reasonable argument in favor of identity theft? So too, arguing that collection has "insignifigance" because you can point out something worse is also unreasonable. Collection stands on it's own as to whether it is always good for species, and habit destruction is separate, and only points out how important it is to get the collection issue right, and not make assumptions that could possibly make it worse. Let me first say that I agree 100% that some species are saved by rare plant collectors, but I certainly think that isn't the only story out there, and the government's viewpoint is perhaps not as crazy as it may seem. Tyrone, in your "case in point", could you be specific, which species was that? Would you say that was an example where collectors have succeeded in saving the species or they have failed? Didn't you say that particular species can't "ever be grown in cultivation"? So should I go get my piece to bring home or should I leave plant material on site for it to have a very slim, but still best possible chance of survival? In my Pritchardia viscosa example there was a thread here on Palmtalk where a viscosa mother plant was from wild collected seeds (I hope not the ones I described above where one of the last plants was severely damaged by a collector), and this mother plant was positively identified later by a well respected palm grower who had spent time at the last stand of viscosa in the wild. However the seedlings from this palm were identified as not viscosa, but unknown. So we have a known mother, unknown progeny, and the mother was kept in a private collection, where we could perhaps expect other species of Pritchardia to occur near. Who was the father? What guarantee is there that these are not polluted hybrids? Yet they are being sold and widely distributed (right here on Palmtalk!) as pure Pritchardia viscosa. The purity of the species could soon be truly lost forever partly because of dilution by collectors. It may be true the other way too, but it really doesn't matter because we can't know for sure. A private collection in a non-natural environment is NO guarantee agianst hybrid pollution for many species. How could we guarantee against hybrid pollution of Pritchardia seedlings? Put them in totally isolated valleys away from other related species, and with exact native weather & cultural conditions so they always come in to flower at the proper times. There is often only one place on earth we are likely to get that... it's original home; and sometimes, many times actually, to take them away is to doom them. Firstly Tom, I'll like to say that I'm not just trying to be disagreeable, or even confrontational. Sometimes the written word can look a bit aggressive when in fact no aggression is intended. You obviously have your views and I have mine and they may not always agree. Government policy makers often read these type of threads and use them to make decisions. If they read that plant collectors are destroying natural stands of wild plants this could start to seriously impact all of us, including any conservation efforts that have serious merit. When it comes to endangered plants and animals - conservation, pretty much all of man's activity comes into the mix, ie political, socio-economic, religious as pointed out by a post further back. At the end of the day, that is all controlled, or allowed to become out of control by governments. Whether we like it or not, they impact on what we do as humans. One of the side effects of all this is mass extinctions of the worlds biological diversity. Now getting back to the point of this thread - Should governments support private collectors in some financial way?. My personal view is don't even bother going down that path. They are the ones who have allowed the mass extinctions to occur in the first place, and the complications that would occur with such a scheme would render it totally useless. I can see an issue straight away if such a scheme was to take effect. Many who are not interested in conservation efforts will fund expeditions to take what's left in an effort to receive the "government hand outs" and therefore put even more pressure on the wild populations. My "case in point" was to illustrate the dual purposes and hypocrisy of some policy makers. On the one hand preventing people from enjoying in a small way the nature that is around them in the name of "conservation" and then demolishing that same natural setting in the name of "progress". I'm not an orchid person so I don't know the botanic name of the plant in question, but I will look for it. I think it was a native slipper orchid. Now getting back to Pritchardia viscosa. As far as I know, those 3 plants on private property are it. In regards to the spike marks up the trunk, they were said to be inflicted possibly by a "botanist" or "seed collector". The article didn't say "severely" damaged. Botanists also remove leaves and inflorescences for pressings. Does this severely damage the plant? Did the plant suffer decline after the spike marks were inflicted or is it fine. Are those marks merely cosmetic?????? With so few in existence is it any wonder these few individuals have had such intense interest. Pritchardia are monoecious as far as I know, so an isolated plant should be able to produce seed true to species. Also NO conservation effort has any guarantee of success. If we didn't try to save these plants because the results were never going to be 100% all the time, there'd be no point in doing anything at all. In a wild section of priceless forest, bulldozers guarantee 100% total failure. I think we have a lot to learn from Hyophorbe americaulis. Now virtually extinct, it long became extinct in the wild before anyone cared less. Best regards Tyrone

The first part I believe is true Tyrone, but perhaps not so relevant to the discussion above. While habitat loss will surely get it's licks in one way or the other, we looking at the question of 'yes monetary support for rare plant collectors to help propogate rare species' or 'no, rare plant collectors have a negative overall effect on endangered species'. Which do you think is true? I don't know though that it's fair to trivialize the negative impact of collectors. I have a past in the orchid world, where species after rare species were permanently lost due to overcollection (not just habitat destruction). Here is one interesting example in the palm world I was just reading about today (from here) of Pritchardia viscosa. Here he's speaking about one of the only four remaining wild trees left in the world: Correct me if I'm wrong but the only known wild population of P viscosa is on private property and the owner does not want anything to do with conservation efforts. Why can this one land owner hold the future prospects of this species in his hands? The worlds biology belongs to the entire world. Why hasn't the government reclaimed that part of his land if he won't cooperate with conservation efforts. I know this is a pointless discussion, but if you look all over the world you'll see botanic gardens with plants and palms that no longer exist in the wild because the land they inhabitated is now built on, or mined on, or cut down. Most of the eastern coastal rainforest on Madagascar simply doesn't exist anymore. I'm not proclaiming wholesale uncontrolled seed and plant collecting in the name of conservation, but rare plant collectors should not be demonised as planet wreckers. I believe most plant collectors have a conscience and are conservationists at heart. My thoughts are that if an area is going to be deforested, as terrible as that is, it would be better than nothing to have specimens grown from that future deforested area, than for that genetic material to be lost totally. I do not believe that rare plant collectors are having a negative overall effect on endangered species. Any government that is using that line of defence is just trying to shift it's moral responsibility by propagating a falsehood. A case in point. In Western Australia you can not go into the wild and pick wildflowers, no matter how small. In fact you can't even remove a piece of wood to put in your reptile terrarium for example. But the government can build a bus station on one of the last known areas for a really rare orchid that can't survive disturbance or ever be transplanted or grown in cultivation. This is a complex issue and yes there have been many times of people pillaging wild populations of genetic material, but habitat destruction makes this pail into insignificance. Best regards Tyrone

I think the biggest cause of extinctions on the planet is actually habitat destruction. This is one thing that governments do have the power to fix, yet in the main choose not too. I do agree though that if a plant is on the brink of extinction due to habitat destruction, the pressure put on it by collectors who have little scruples can come in, take all the seed, and become the feather that broke the camels back. But they're generally not the reason why the plant became endangered in the first place. This is a complex issue and I don't believe we'll fix it unfortunately. Best regards Tyrone

In theory it's a good idea, but in practice a government will mess such a scheme up. How do you define "endangered" and who defines it. Quite often new species are discovered that are endangered but governments move so slowly they wouldn't update there "endangered" registers before the plant has actually become extinct. So you'd find you will be growing plants without funding because they don't recognise that particular species as valid or studied enough to put on the register and therefore provide the funding or whatever assistance they had in mind. I personally feel it's better to do things yourself and enjoy the journey. In the meantime if you are growing rare and endangered plants get involved with botanic gardens etc and donate to them. You may not get your name up in lights, but it will feel good to have done it. That's my take on it anyway. Best regards Tyrone

After this short stay, up we go, north. Plenty of mismarckias again, millions.

Very beautiful place with such strange plants! we had the impressio of looking at corrals under the sea

The picture of the mountain is taken from a nice "bed and breakfast" facing it. A few steps into the mountain I had the surprise of having this beautiful flower in front of me. A climber and then a grass

A few hours away another stop at that mountain called Andrigitra. A privately owned park has been set up by the villagers with the help of an association. as soon as we started a bunch of maki greeted us. They were licking a special spot where there is earth that contains salt! We stayed with them quite a while.

We leave the sea behind now and head up up back north. We stopped one night in Isalo mountains and met a few bismarckias on the way.

A strange plant that i have not identified, right in the middle.

For the baobabs fans, here is another pic of one of those leafless ones. I really don't know what variety it is sorry. As I said above, even with book, we could not diferentiate them. I only know that the ones in alley of baobabs, are andansonia grandidierii, like the ones by the pond with water lilies. And the oldest one which is in the Tléar region is around 4000 years old. We also saw quite a few of those beautiful pachypodiums A close up of the thorns

There's a really big one. I read somewhere that the widest baobab needs 34 persons to go round it. And the oldest one could be 4 000 years old.

wrong pic above We saw a very different kind of baobab also by the dry lake

We meet some inseperable lovers on the way Strange aren't they?

Leaving belo sur mer. Just a few km from the sea we meet this dry salted lake. The road goes alongside it. Salt is exploited here. Plenty of baobabs again

We were in the "small tsingy" there. Here is how we get into the "large tsingy". A narrow space and a long ladder down. Once inside, this is the way it looks like, and 40 to 60 meters of rocks above us. Like in the small ones, this is full of water in summer, up to 1.5m.

Let's move on! One and a half hour after the baobabs avenue, we reached Kirindy forest, a small nature reserve. Most of it deciduous forest in dry land. You saw our latest baobabs were not too far from the water. Here is the only "black" baobab! In that forest what we enjoyed most were that colony of lemurs walking on the path just a few meters in front of us. it was son funny. I have a 15 second movie of them but don't know if I can put it here?

My dad went back to the stars five years ago. This is a friend of mine, 71 years old. The driver on his left. There was also the younger brother of that friend who is my age: 62. All grand pa's...life goes on. DK: the west coast is very dry. You can see that from the pictures.Seven to eight months without rain just like the capital, then a rainy season with 140 /180mm of rain. But most of those bismarckias grow not too far from the river .

Sorry, but I fell in love with that pond! the contrast between that huge tree and the water and those flowers was "my cup of tea"... Closer to the flowers And a close up

Sorry I put the wrong pic. Here it is:

Baobab avenue with the sun in the back. A few mile after the "avenue" we fell upon this perfectly round pond, full of superb waterlillies.

After that small city, our direction is north, towards the tsingy. Two days to get there and plenty of baobabs on the way. A lot of Adamsonia grandidieri, a few A.ZA, A.FONY, but don't ask me which are which! We have tried to name them from the description, it was impossible. We needed the flower and the fruit, which were not there! So here are a few baobabs The famous "baobab avenue" showed all over the world.

I have forgotten that one: phoenix reclinata. Also millions of them in all sorts of habitats: dry wasteland, riverbanks, alongside the roads, very pretty palm, it gives the area where they grow a morroccan look! The starts our first baobab: And then, plenty of them, even among coconuts!

Millions of hyphaenae coriacea, really millions, some nice big ones but most have been suffering repeated fires and bad treatments. The last palm will be posted later. After that palm pic we start landscapes if you don't mind.

A few borassus also, most of them in not so good shape. With typical belly.