collecting Phempis (take off from other Q regarding collecting material)

responsible People of bonsai world,

Hi.
this is related to the previous post asking question on the collection of material, and after reading posts reply of Jose Luis which tackles South east asia and the Pemphis acidula i decided to post my answer as a new topic...another reason is that i cant comment on language discussions, im poor at it...

As you all know bonsai culturing, production or planting what ever term it is, is relatively new in this part of the world. but if you go to bonsai exhibits conducted here youl notice that the show is being dominated by pemphis acidula huge and small, its becoming like a new trend here for the past decade. most of the winners (around 90%) are also coming from this species as a result more and more bonsai material gatherers/hunters were looking for this species because of the huge demand for this high valued tree...none of it were legally acquired, no permits what so ever. some hunters even went to jail for a brief period of time (with a very little fine if none at all )for this act. see my other posts with the new materials..tons of pemphis were collected every hunting season. (im partly guilty for buying some). To make the matter worst some Taiwanese were also coming to some islands here to collect the same species and they send it to China or Taiwan illegally via fishing boats. (this are second hand info coming from local hunters encountering foreigner hunting the same species)...sometimes its seems that it is becoming like a race to get as much pemphis acidulas as they can before the species runs out of supplly in the wild.

Got this questions now:
1. a pemphis acidula grows slow... say 50 to 70 years to develop an aged old trunk, and these trees are not allowed to be harvested from the wild (in most cases and areas). then most of these species that we see in shows are illegally acquired?
2. base on the premise above, is it morally right to send this species and be allowed to join in a bonsai show...worst to let it win in a contest? IMHO its like sending a nice carnapped car in a car show then people and judges applaud for a stolen nice masterpiece.

Regards and best wishes to mother nature,

jun

Hi Jun, I think you are 100% correct on this one. It is totally wrong to go into wild areas and completely strip them of any species for personal gain. I really don't object to artists removing one or two plants for their own collections but to carry on this practice for commercial purposes on a large scale is bad.
I always encourage people here who want collected trees to concentrate on weed species and leave the indigenous plants alone.
Thanks for your thought provoking post
Craig

craig,
thanks.
i know some people here though, not selling these trees for commercial purposes have hundreds of pemphis acidulas as part of their personal collection, is it ok? some club officers here even had published a step by step process on books on how to collect these trees in the wild and location where they are abundant including gears to bring and the best time to collect, as if encouraging more people to go to those areas to get more of these species....now they wont accept me in their club ( yes its true, im not a member of any local club, due to some moral issues involved on plants and shows)

regards,
jun

Wow Jun, you have really taken a stand, good on you, from my perspective to collect hundreds of them is also not good why is it necessary to have so many when the wild population of old plants is under threat. We have a similar problem here in Australia with some of our wild parrot populations, these birds and their eggs are worth a lot of money in the USA and Europe.
Craigw

Helo Jun,

Due to your moral issues, I wud like to adapt your pemphis collections especially your cascade on the rock.
Just let me if your okay so that we can arrange the pick-up sked....

Hi emerson,

like craig said, having a few of them is still ok. actually i only got 4 of them. so if you gonna take 1 i will be left only with 3 and your yard will with filled more with them. if you notice my posts in this forum i only got two pemphis acidula posted,thats basically half of them. my stocks of 200 plus trees all are tropical trees not listed on the endangered trees, thats why i am trying to experiment more with almost useless trees like chinese "S" elm (though not tropical) and some tropical trees that we never heard of before .. please see also my post regarding my nursery, if you saw pemphis there il give it to you.
but no offense to you or any of my fellow filipino bonsaist, why dont we try a more sustainable trees on bonsai.
i personally find it more challenging to design tropical trees specially if its a newly found species for bonsai rather than make a TOPIARY out of an endangered species.


regards,
jun



craig,


see.. this is what im telling you about, why im not joining clubs locally, if you want to do something right here...people here will conceived your thoughts as an attack on their ideas and norms.

regards,
jun

I don't know what you can do Jun, one man on his own is not much of a voice, you need to find more people with similar attitudes to yours and also to keep lobbying the clubs. I know the Japanese banned the collection of wild shimpaku quite a long time ago. But even if something is outlawed it them has to be policed and the Philippines has a vast number of islands so policing would be really difficult.
Good luck
From Craig

Jun,

Actually I was kidding, I have nothing against you personally and I dont need your pemphis. I have plenty of them in my garden maybe 300plus. 95% was collected before the declaration of being an endangered specie. Wanton destruction of pemphis are coming from hotel and resort developers. My collections is only a days work of a bulldozer.

But taking a stand on this issue, you should "WALK YOUR TALK". What I really mean is that you have to get rid all endagered specie in your nursery or garden. Having one is not okay....and you need to join a club near you where you can make a difference on your stand.

Have a nice day.

Hello to all the participants!

Jun has said that he feels guilty for having bought some collected trees, be it Pemphis or anything...
And he also has posed a query whether it is ethical for the Clubs to accept participations with illegaly (evidently) acquired trees.
This is the hit on target, which none of the previous inputs has faced...

I believe and I say that every club worldwide doing so is participant in the Nature's rapine!
Unless their members present their legal permit for the collection of the exact tree.

Here in Greece, it is illegal to collect any of the species named "forestal". This I know for sure, I do not know about any specific details...
But I do know (being member to local fora as there is not a club existing for the time being...) that a lot of bonsai enthusiasts do organize excursions for collecting Junipers, Crataegus and other trees WITHOUT any permission from the authorities!!!
And I do know that a lot of these stock die because of the inexperience of the collectors!!!
I myself have dug a small black pine and a pyrus spinosa BUT from my own territory and they were salvaged from the bulldozer cutting.... (they didn't make it though...)

I believe this is a moral problem we are discussing about...
And I am glad to realize that there are a lot of people having similar ethical inhibitions.

Emerson,
" by the grace of god i am what i am"

...same here with me. i have nothing against you or what you believe in. or any clubs belief. but joining a club with members and officers with a closed mind on some issues il rather enjoy being alone, this is not a quest by the way. i just simply disagree with some irresponsible people patronizing something destructive to the environment.
...and to correct your issues on hotels destroying habitats i beg to disagree...go to some areas where you have collected your 300 plus pemphis. i dont think you can still find the same volume of this species in that area. just to give you a fact on this, i went to lucena, quezon province last summer for fishing trip. and saw this small village (baranggay) named bantigue (pemphis acidula) . and ask a local officer there why did they name their village after a bantigue. for an obvious answer he told me that several decades ago all the coaslines in their area are full of this tree, today you are lucky enough to find a single tree in that coast line... and there is not even a single development in that particular coastline... he told me that the pemphis there were hunted down to extinction by bonsai collectors local and foreign during the 90's and 80's. so if you find it still responsible that collecting several species even before they were declared illegal is still rational its up to you. but i hope you didnt collect in that area because that is my homeprovince...
on my pemphis, i will still hold on to it...a few of them per person wont increase the demand for such species, thus it wont be harvested rampantly.

...so "by the grace of god, i am what i am", you dont need a bonsai club to be what you are or a government to make a ban on some issues to know if what you are doing is right or wrong.


i hope to meet you someday "pare". so we can have a good discussions over a couple of beer. peace man.


respectfully yours,
jun

jun wrote: .... ...
...so "by the grace of god, i am what i am", you dont need a bonsai club to be what you are or a government to make a ban on some issues to know if what you are doing is right or wrong.
... ...

Same for me!!!

Jun,

I have not tackled Southeast Asia in any way. I only offered an example of a species that has been hunted heavily (argument that your essay supports). I could have said the same thing about Kamagong and Bantulinao (Maba/Diospyros). Perhaps, Blue Bell (Desmodium) might have been a good example. Maybe you failed to see that i also mentioned Suriana Maritima, a latinamerican species similar to Bantigue (pemphis) that has been heavily collected and that has a low survival rate.

I own pemphis acidula trees and love them like my children. I always advice my students to detract from cultivating them until they know how to. This species needs special care and it is definitely not a good choice for novices. I love southeast asia and have made it a home away from home. Please, let's put things into perspective. Unfortunately, I now remember why I decided to discontinue posting.

Sincerely,

Jose Luis

Jose Luis,

thanks for the clarification. like i said i have nothing against responsible people owning delicate trees like bantigue. the problem is with some people who seems to be driven by greed nowadays owning hundreds of single specie of trees rather than owning the trees for art sake, at the expense of the environment. with regards to other mediums like bantolinao, blue bell, and kamagong... these species can easily be replaced through reforestration, but for bantigue it think its a different case altogether even the critical location of the pemphis acidula along the coastlines are much critical than other trees.

...the next time you go to the philippines il be glad to be your host. thanks for loving southeast asia.

regards,
jun

Hi Jun, I have been to Japan and visited Kinashi where the big commercial pine nurseries are situated and so I know that it is very possible to grow fantastic bonsai from seed and cuttings. ok the time frames are longer but the end result is good, the trees grown from scratch have a different feel to the collected trees but they are never the less very fine bonsai. Here in Australia it is very rare to see collected trees other than weed species or garden specimens, and there is a culture developing for field growing bonsai, I hope this will be the future of bonsai internationally.
Craigw

Craig,
thanks for the input.
the only problem here i think is the process by which pemphis is being extracted from the habitat. pemphis got so many hair roots above ground, sometimes roots were naturally developed in branches were dirt got accumulated. people can easily extract these big branches with roots and the survival rate of this newly cut branch is the same as the main trunk with roots. then just leave the main trunk behind to recover from sometime before harvesting again. or if they really want to get the main trunk, at least plant several living secondary branches of these trees from the spot where the tree was pulled out.
when cleaning a newly harvested pemphis, lot of branches with chances of survival were cut out and wasted. if people are just aware of method to culture these branches and return the live ones in the habitat next hunting season, i think thats a more agreeable term with nature.

regards,
jun

Thanks Jun.

You've shed a light on something most of us would have never known - and may choose not to know. I never imagined the magnitude of this problem. Sadly, it reminds me of whaling, ivory and rhino horns.

It pains me to know that the art I love has caused this kind of destruction. (and I'll not even mention our forum friends in Europe and their mugho pines, etc). I don't know if your stand will make a difference, but I appreciate you taking it.

R

Thanks Russell,


the only difference with owning an ivory or rhino horn is that hunters must kill the elephant or the rhino or whale first to get the small portion of the poor animal for the intended part. and these giant mammals dont reproduce easily. but with trees being collected, people have a choice, a lot of choice... either to cut some portion of the tree and the tree still survives in fact it will strengthen the tree more, or just replaced the uprooted tree with a couple of new trees. its just a matter of choice... or just a selfish desire.

regards,
jun

I member reading in National Geographic a few years ago about the ivory trade. They were telling the story of a Japanese man who was a master in the art of ivory carving. He never allowed himself to think about the source of that ivory until the day he hit a lead slug in the piece of ivory he was carving. His whole world changed in that moment.

It doesn't matter if it's buttonwoods, whales, pemphis, cockatoos, mugo pines or ivory. The world's an empty place without them.

R

Russell Coker wrote: ... ... ...
It doesn't matter if it's buttonwoods, whales, pemphis, cockatoos, mugo pines or ivory. The world's an empty place without them.
R

Wisely said, Russell !!

Hi Jun, thank you for alerting me to the Pemphis issue. I had no idea prior to your post. When I hear about people collecting hundreds of them I have to wonder "why?". I believe it is greed; something we humans seem to have a knack for. I understand that professional bonsai nurseries must stay in business, and that supply and demand rules commerce. But when people cross that line from "need" to "raping the resources", then this affects us all. We have a similar situation with buttonwood collecting in our part of the world.
My brother works for an oil company and lectured me on collecting trees in the wild as "detrimental to the well being of natural places..." You can imagine my surprise when he was comparing "oil drilling" to "tree collecting" and indicated that tree digging was more detrimental to the environment than oil drilling. This ignorance never ceases to amaze me. However,when I read or hear stories about people collecting with disregard to the numbers they are taking, I have to admit that my brother may be right in some cases.
All in all, thank you for educating us. Salute, Todd

Hi,
something disturbs me in this topic. I'm sorry and don't thing I want to be unpleasant or impolite but, if you don't want hunters to dig some Pemphis, don't buy them. If you stop to buy those trees, this business will finish to die at least. The same for rhino or elephant ivory. I know it's easy to say, but it's also easy to say : "I own rhino ivory but I'm innocent, I didn't kill animals, I just buy their ivory". In the end, owning ivory or protected trees is to accept that certain people kill the animals or dig trees for our account.

No hard feelings and kind regards.
Matthieu

Dear Matthieu,
I've posted a similar challenge to the other thread existing about collecting from the wild...
Wondering about the moral responsibility. In other words being the buyers abettors to crime...
Seems like this factor is being almost suppressed... We let ourselves go shaking any responsibility.

Dear Alexandra,
To be totally honest I like to collect trees. For me, it's one of the bonsai ways. But to collect, it's important to have an ethic. It's stupid to collect just for the purpose to own a specific tree. I don't think I'm also a criminal to buy a collected tree. By the way, I don't buy them
But it's different where I live. The trees I collect are not at all endangered species and I only collect very few trees a year, and especially in areas where I have legal permission.
But I also agree on the fact that illegal collected trees, with endangered species or not, are very far from bonsai spirit. You have to find the correct borderline between the real enthusiast and the "business man" !
Regards
Matthieu

Todd,
you are welcome. i can only speak for pemphis acidula...
if bonsai clubs could only check the status of some plants commonly used for bonsai in their areas probably we can have some sort of assessment if we are already over collecting/ over harvesting a particular specie, then that club can address that issue, like conducting tree planting as replacement for the collected trees. all clubs i think have some sort of codes/rules with regards to tree collection and trees being displayed in shows, probably they can impose guidelines that refers to some particular endangered species of trees, like certification of some sort from the clubs where the artist/collector belongs. that way people gathering trees will be monitored in some ways.


regards,
jun


Matthieu,

thank you, like i said im partly guilty for buying few pemphis.
im not trying to rationalize things here... but i think owning a few of a particular specie isnt the same as owning a rhino horn or an ivory. since i posted this this question several days ago, i started to plant a couple of dozen pemphis branches from my pemphis trees,with some survival rates, few died already. then this coming summer il placed this small surviving pemphis near our house in the province along the coast line, then il monitor the trees if they can survive, i guess i cant do that kind of replacement for a rhino or an ivory if i have those items as part of my collection...can i?

its just a matter of mathematics, just to give you an example on this. one of the guys who posted an answer to my post owns three hundred pemphis... and he is not one of the biggest collector of pemphis here in the philippines that i know of.others have probably more than five hundred pemphis (per person) at their disposal... and how many of this pemphis have you seen in an international stage competition...i only saw a handful. i hope you get what i mean because i dont want to offend other people by going to details on this. if you know somebody who is nurturing a pemphis, you can ask them how delicate this tree is even after the initial stage of the tree's life, then you can do the math on the trees that makes it against the pile of carcasses
of pemphis acidula in some collectors yard who do not even know how to water a plant.

by the way, im not offended by your post in any way...i appreciate your comment a lot, thanks again.

regards,
jun

Jun,
I'm happy you understand that my post wasn't against you. It was just my point of view about this and yamadori in general. I'm totaly agree with your action of planting little pemphis branches and let 'em grow for several years (or less if you want some to work with!). Maybe it can be a way in order to save this tree if many people do the same.

Regards
Matthieu