Cattleya velutina - Lost species

[Rosim_in_BR]

Originally Posted by Jan Pahl

Mauro I can't say to much because I’m not Brazilian and I am far from becoming an expert on the subject of bifoliate Cattleyas, but even if I consider that Miranda can be wrong, If I recall well in orchidnews (online magazine run by Delfina de Araujo), are some well documented interviews with few Brazilian orchid collectors that know and even photographed wild Velutinas if you like to check graphic evidence of the species in the wild.

What I believe I know from similar data, is that the species always was and still is very rare, and is completely sure that today velutina is by far much more rare and insecure than it was on the past, but like some people theorize about species like Laelia tenebrosa, It seems that ecological preferences on some species are so narrow (something that reflects the distance between colonies and the precarious size of wild colonies) that a trained researcher can spend years walking “through” known velutina land and don’t find a single plant even if those plants are there. And of course average colony size can be so small, that a single unscrupulous collector or even a farmer with a “machette” trying to clear land to grow a family-size crop can destroy or at least badly harm a complete colony quite quickly. What i trying to say here using the documented data I recall at this moment, is that the smallest of the pressures can erase one healthy colony from one documented visit till the next one… That puts Cattleya velutina in the list of species that even can completely disappear from the record from one year till next-one, just to reappear few “years” later on one or more different colonies.

Really I don’t know how much this species is going to last living la vida loca. The only thing that for me is sure, is that it seems that orchid growers have to live with the fact that the only genetic material of Velutina we already have on cultivation, is the only genetic material we are going to have on the future, thus, any plant of the species on cultivation is a Jewell by itself and for that, in "horticultural" purposes the species is somehow "extinct" since they are no genetic flow from the wild till cultivation, in that matter if you want you can put the “extinct” label on phantom species like this one, but technically a species only can be called extinct few years later the last wild living subject was documented (right know I don’t recall how many years after). This is done this way because many species on the brink of extinction, but also naturally rare species and species that tends to have very abrupt fluctuations on wild populations have the tendency to disappear from record just to reappear few years later. Thus is a form of “secure” way to cover naturalists credibility, that's why they tend to use words like “supossibly extinct” if they have enough data to think real extinction actually occurred.

Saludos
Jan

I can agree with that, Jan Pahl. Of course I am not telling the authorities must declare it extinct. All the official lists consider it on the verge of extintion and I guess it is ok to declare it this way for them to preserve their credibility. I can also agree that from time to time here and there a plant can be found (except the variety paulista for which I believe there's no more hope). All these things are technicalites after all, because the important thing in all this is what you mention on your post when you say that the genetic material of velutina we already have in hands is the only one we're going to have in the future because no new is coming from the wild. For our purposes on the orchid comunity that's what extintion means and that's what I had in mind when I said it was lost in nature (I leave the techicalities for the scientists).

[gixrj18]

Beautiful!!