Episode 283: The Cactus Hunters

Love of cacti runs deep: they are among the most heavily threatened species among internationally traded plants for ornamental collection.

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TRANSCRIPT

[0:00] Music.

[0:16] Jane Perrone

And welcome to the first episode of 2024. How the devil are you? I'm Jane Perrone and this is my podcast On The Ledge where all indoor gardening topics are on the table for discussion. If this is your first time listening, welcome and if you've been here for the past nearly seven years then welcome back. In today's show, I'm interviewing Dr. Jared Margulies about his book, The Cactus Hunters. So if you've been worried about whether your cactus collecting habit is putting native plants at risk, this episode will help you find out and we'll be discussing what makes a cactus us quite so unavoidably deliciously desirable. Plus I answer a question about a prayer plant leaf that's developed a strange starry appearance.

[1:21] Jane Perrone

Well happy new year and all that jazz. How are you you doing? I am head down, getting through the rest of winter, remembering that it's getting lighter from here for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, which is giving me some comfort.

[1:39] And totally off topic, but I'm going to give you three things that are also helping me get through this winter.

[1:45] They're completely unrelated to plants, but here we go. Anyway, the TV drama drama Slow Horses - it's on Apple TV which I don't normally subscribe to but I've taken out a trial because this show was recommended to me. It's got Gary Oldman in it, Kristen Scott Thomas, it is absolutely excellent - so yes, try Slow Horses if you like the sound of a really high quality spy thriller. Next up if you are a fan of the TV show Ghosts - the UK version - I have nothing to say about the American version because I'm not going to swear on this podcast but if you like Ghosts there's a book accompanying the series now that it's finished which is out now produced by the BBC it's brilliant if you're a Ghosts fan you must absolutely must get it. And finally listener to the show Susan Richardson's book Where the Seals Sing: Exploring the Hidden Lives of Britain's Grey Seals is on my bedside table right now and I've absolutely fallen in love with her book about grey seals. You may not know these are actually more endangered than African elephants and in this book Susan does a magnificent job of giving us an insight into their lives and why they are such fascinating creatures it's beautifully written so I recommend that book Where the Seals Sing snd that's published by William Collins. I'll put links to all those three things in the show notes. So that's just my little tip for today. Three things to check out if you're trying to get through winter 2024 in the Northern Hemisphere without losing your marbles. And don't forget to subscribe to The Plant Ledger, my weekly email newsletter about the world of houseplants. It's not just a plug for this podcast, let me tell you. It's full of fascinating news and tips tips and advice and some fun stuff too. And in this week's edition, there's a guest column about how to save time on houseplant chores. Some excellent tips that you don't want to miss. So go and sign up for that now. You'll find that at janeperrone.com. Just click on the newsletter link.

[4:00] Right, on to today's show. You may remember back in January 2021, I interviewed Dr. Jared Margulies about cactus poaching and this episode is an update on that story because Jared has published a book called The Cactus Hunters and this is such rich, delightfully rich terrain. The intersection between desire for plants and an illegal trade that I had to talk to Jared again to find out more about his book the travels with plant hunters that he undertook for his book research and lots more and really importantly some tips and importantly some tips for you on knowing when there are red flags with collecting cacti and what you should be looking out for you don't have to go back and listen to that initial episode before listening to this one but i will put a link in in the show notes if you want to check that out. So let me welcome to the show Dr. Jared Margulies, who is a political ecologist at the University of Alabama in the US.

[5:11] Music.

[5:18] Jared, thank you so much for joining me on On the Ledge. The Cactus Hunters, I had a great time reading this book. It really exercised my brain, which is very good. And I loved the central premise of this book, which is you exploring this mystery of why cactus collectors do naughty things, if I can put it that way, do illicit acts, I think you call them, which end up causing the plant, the very plants that they love to be on the brink of extinction. Why did you decide to focus on that particular question among the myriad questions that there are out there about plants generally?

[6:07] Jared Margulies

I was interested in this question, I think, above all, because the kind of frameworks and theories I've used before in my research didn't feel like they were adequate to the task of trying to understand these dynamics. And by that, I mean, most of my research in the past about human wildlife interactions or relations or conflicts, oftentimes boiled down to issues of conflicts over economy, and sort of who has access to the economy, and, you know, sort of benefiting themselves and contestations that emerge through those interactions and access to resources. And I found that with this particular set of problems, just attending to who profits and who wins and who loses in the illicit succulent trade was not up to task to understand these dynamics. And in fact, something else was going And that's ultimately where I came to situate the book in around questions of desire. So to respond to your question, I just found this community so fascinating, you have this really passionate group of people who are absolutely in love with and obsessed, and I genuinely do mean love with these plants, and yet seemingly were embroiled in activities that might be, you know, sending them towards their extinction. And so I had to really stick with desire as a kind of central analytic for understanding those relationships.

[7:35] Jane Perrone

Yeah, there are many examples in the book of where you illustrate quite how powerful the draw is. You talk early in the book about this group, this non-botanical definition, really, of plants known as succulents and, you know, tell us that there are around 12,000 species that come into this category, this loose category of succulents. But there aren't that many of them, relatively few you of those that are that make up this body of these super desirable, lootable plants that have really caught the attention of these cactus collectors what is it that you found that were the distinguishing features of those particular plants that have been pushed to the brink by collectors it's funny when I first started this work I actually thought about trying to write write some kind of equation, you know, that we could come up with that. It helped us understand which species are really the ones that seem to set cactus and succulent collector desires, you know, out into the world in these ways that potentially do harm. And, you know, there are certain tendencies, right? So plants that are inherently rare, certainly become objects of interest. I found that plants that oftentimes had more restricted habitat range, which again speaks to rarity, but some plants are just naturally rare in that there's very few in where they grow, but there are also ones where they're extremely abundant. It's just that their area that you can find them in is very limited. Plants that have really unique features, morphological features, characteristics, of course, oftentimes drive interest and desire. So if you have a species within a genus that usually looks one way, and then you have this one species that has this sort of strange characteristic that's different, that often is an important part of it. And then there's always the flower, especially with cacti, you know, especially species that have really magnificent flowers. And so there's always exceptions to these rules, but oftentimes the species that really seem to cause what we could think of as a kind of tulip mania, but within the world of succulents and cacti often have a mixture of these kinds of features.

[9:54] There are exceptions, of course, we could talk more about the, and we've talked before about, you know, the example of Dudleya farinosa from California as a species that I wouldn't say fits any of those boxes really, and think about why that trade exploded it in the way it did. But I think oftentimes it's that mixture of things that help collectors imagine a particular plant as a kind of unique thing in the world that oftentimes is what sets a particular plant up to be more desirable than others.

[10:25] Jane Perrone

There is so much that is against cacti in the world at the moment. You know, we're experiencing climate change conditions that are really starting to affect some species and, you know, land grabs by developers and all kinds of things. Also, including obviously cacti collectors. You write in the book that 75 percent of cacti in the world are experiencing a decline in their population. There is something being done about this in the form of the the CITES legislation but I think a lot of people hear that term bandied around but don't really know what that is how it works and whether it's actually doing any good can you just talk a little bit about CITES and how it works and what it is.

Jared Margulies

Right so for for listeners who are unfamiliar CITES is the convention on international National Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES for short. It went into effect in 1975. And especially within the context of my project, it's the convention that makes it even possible to talk about international illegal trade in cactus and succulent plants, because this is the convention that regulates these things. One of the things that I think is often often lost or confused in discussions about CITES is that this is a trade regulatory convention. It's not a conservation convention per se. And what I mean by that is the way CITES works is there are these appendices or three appendix in which plants or animals can be listed to a particular appendix. For our purposes, effectively CITES 1 appendix, appendix 1, effectively bans any trade whatsoever, with the exception of scientific research. But that is still not always easy, as botanists and other scientists will tell you.

[12:21] Appendix two allows for trade but requires export permits from the country that the plant or animal is being traded from. And appendix three is probably a little bit too in the weeds for us. It's a sort of unusual usual one. What's interesting about cacti, especially, is that the entire family of cactaceae, with a couple of exceptions, is listed on CITES Appendix 2 or CITES Appendix 1, which means that any international trade in cacti is regulated in some way by CITES. So if you're trading in plants internationally in cacti and you're not engaging with CITES, it becomes illegal. And so when we talk about illegal wildlife trade in these species, that's kind of part of what we're talking about. CITES does not have come to bear on domestic trade. And it's important to recognize that. So, you know, the movement of plants from California to Alabama, where I am speaking to you from today is not regulated by CITES. And that's another point of confusion, I think.

Jane Perrone

I know in the UK, certainly some houseplant sellers kind of curse CITES or I've seen posts in the last 12 months saying, well, we haven't got any cacti in because darn CITES has stopped us. There's too much paperwork and we just can't get any from nurseries overseas. I guess the curse of bureaucracy, but has it had an impact in terms of curbing the excesses of poaching and transportation of cacti across country lines?

Jared Margulies

It's a great question. I did some survey work alongside my book work where I actually asked some questions about CITES to cactus and succulent collectors, especially in the UK, but in the US and Europe. One of the things that's happening right now in the UK in particular is that the UK used to be part of the EU, which meant that you You didn't need CITES permits to trade plants from, say, Belgium to the UK, whereas now you do. And so Brexit is having a huge impact on the cactus and succulent collector community, which is worth noting. You know, most of the collectors I surveyed, and there was about 500 collectors surveyed in that research, which was published this year, it generally felt like CITES was a good thing and well-intended. And I agree with that sentiment that, you know, when this legislation came into effect after many years of development in 1975, it was an extremely well-intended legislation. One of the big problems with it today, and this is meant as a constructive critique, is this was legislation that was written in the era before the Internet. And I would argue hasn't necessarily been able to keep pace with these kinds of advances in the flows of goods around the world and the rapidity with which buyers and sellers can be connected through a myriad of communication platforms from Instagram and Facebook to WhatsApp, that is extremely challenging to regulate. And so to the question of how effective it is, I think in part it depends on who you ask. Plenty of Mexican conservation authority officials I've interviewed have said it's been extremely effective from their perspective. But I also know plenty of people who would disagree with that sentiment and argue that, you know, lots and lots of species, for instance, from Mexico are circulating out in the world effectively illegally because Mexico has never granted export permits for those species. And yet you can find them all over the place. So how effective is it really? And a bigger question for me is who's benefiting as a result of CITES or not. And one of the things I kind of come to in the book is making this claim that one of the ways that I think there's room for improvement, working with government officials who manage CITES is trying to use the tool as a means to support communities who actually live in these places where these plants come from. And that's simply just something that isn't really happening in the world today. And I recently was in South Africa this summer, trying to get at grips on this really profound issue of over-harvesting of a variety of succulents from the South African succulent Karoo, and seeing these areas of really extraordinary poverty where these plants grow. And some of them are quickly vanishing from the earth as a result of really high demand internationally. And yet, these are plants that quite easily can be seeded, It can be grown and raised in cultivation. Why can't we develop mechanisms to support communities in these areas by growing these plants? I think that's an important task for the conservation community to really dig into.

[17:06] Music.

[17:15] More from Jared shortly, but now it's time for Question of the week. And this one comes from Carolyn who has a question about a plant that's developed a rather worrying symptom. Carolyn gets in touch because her plant which she describes as a rattlesnake calathea has developed pinprick sized dots on the leaves so you can see through both sides and in a rather interesting photo that Carolyn sent me you can indeed see through both sides in fact an underside side view of the leaf gives the plant a kind of starry appearance which on the surface is actually quite attractive but that's not how that leaf is supposed to look just as an aside i'm not sure this is a Calathea, or to give it its updated taxonomic name, a Geoppertia. Carolyn this matters not for the advice i'm going to give you but you know me, I'm a taxonomy geek, so just worth pointing that out whatever it is it's definitely a member of the prayer plant family though. Let's deal with these pinpricks across the leaf. Carolyn does say that at first guttation looked like a possible cause because they look like tiny water droplets that don't wipe off. And then Carolyn goes on to suspect spider mites or thrips and says that this plant has been showing these symptoms for over a year and otherwise seems very happy. So what in the dickens is going on? Well, it's an interesting one, Carolyn. Looking at the leaves, I think that what you're dealing with here, given that you've said the plant is relatively healthy, is historic damage from spider mites. Now, all members of the prayer plant family, so things like Gapertias, aka Calatheas, Marantas, Stromance, and indeed Ctenanthes, these are absolute catnip for the spider mite. And I will always, the very first thing I'll do is check the leaves, the underside of the leaves, and look for signs of spider mite presence. And this is where your hand lens comes in really handy because spider mites themselves are generally too small to see with the naked eye. So if you can get a magnifying glass onto them, you might be able to see these small crab-like creatures moving around the leaf. And I'm going to be really honest with you here, if I go into your house or indeed a houseplants shop or any other place where there's a prayer plant. You know I'm getting my hand lens out and checking the leaves.

[19:50] I have no shame. I will be using my hand lens looking for signs of spider mites and hopefully I'll be able to give you a message that they're all clear, but I'm just going to be that gal who's staring at your leaves obsessively if you happen to have prayer plants. Well, and let's be quite honest, if you have any plant whatsoever.

Anyway, in the unfortunate event of you not having a hand lens, what can you look for that you can see with the naked eye? What is visible is usually a white kind of crusty stuff and unpleasantly enough this is actually the shed skins of the spider mites as they grow they shed their skins and also eggs and this is usually visible along the midrib the centre line of the leaf and that's something you can see with the naked eye.

[20:41] In a really bad infestation as well you'll see webbing but if a plant's got webbing on it basically it's too far gone and you should probably throw it away where do these minute pinprick holes come in well that is another symptom of the spider mite these are sap feeders they are piercing the leaf and sucking away at the contents and that's how they live. Now I did do a bit of digging for the exact process involved here and i'll link to the page that i found this is a rather useful page about spider mite damage that comes from a website called livingwithbugs.com Jack DeAngelis who is a PhD in entomology and this website explains that the piercing tool that the spider mite uses are the chelicerae that basically the mouth parts are kind of a sharp pincer type thing that's used to pierce the leaf and get through the cuticle.

[21:46] And to the sap below. Now, obviously, if you punch a hole in a leaf, what happens? Well, it's going to lose moisture through that hole. And I think that's why Carolyn has been seeing water droplets, because, of course, sap will leak from those holes. And that is an extra component of the damage that spider mites do.

[22:09] So they damage the leaf, they take away sap to feed themselves, but also they leave an open wound, which then will also leak sap. And that's why you end up with this curled leaf that you get with spider plants, a plant that looks desiccated and sad because it's just basically losing fluid the whole time. And another fascinating fact that I got from this page is that the stress that the spider mite damaging the plant causes makes the plant stick more sugars and more nitrogen into the leaf because it's trying to protect itself. And that in turn gives the spider mites a better return on its investment because those are the nutrients that it's looking for. So you can see why this is is a vicious cycle and spider mites can quite quickly kill a plant. I think in the case of your plant Carolyn if it's looking healthy and the leaves aren't looking desiccated and curled up it may be that you've got signs of historic damage that's been done.

[23:12] Leaves with wounds of any kind they're not going to heal the plant will go on and put out new leaves of course but it cannot heal wounds in the same way that our skin can. So these holes will remain ad infinitum. If you look at that leaf and you're not seeing any signs of spider mites actively moving about, especially if you're using a hand lens, as I say, I suspect this is damage that's been done. The spider mites have been cleared up and your plant goes on. But definitely worth if you have got these pinprick signs looking at the leaves of this plant very carefully and checking there's no remainder of one or two spider mites or eggs kicking about on the leaf that could set off a whole new infestation and as I say prayer plants they absolutely are magnets for red spider mites but this is why it's useful to really look at your your leaves and also to look at the under sides and look at them via a light source because sometimes that way you will see things that you haven't otherwise spotted you might see other pests you might see mealy bugs you might even see tortrix moth caterpillar caterpillars which I will talk about in another episode which tend to hide out in a curled section of leaf and are sometimes times quite hard to spot, but by looking underneath a leaf up towards a light source, you will spot things you won't spot by looking at a leaf from above.

[24:45] So fascinating stuff, Carolyn. Thank you so much for your question. And I hope that helps with your prayer plant.

[24:54] As I say, do send me more photos if you want me to ID it for sure. I'm thinking the most likely candidate might be a Ctenanthe or a Stromanthe, which are also members of the prayer plant family. Maybe Ctenanthe 'Grey Star'? Again, I'm slightly clutching at straws here, but send me a better photo and I'll idea it for you as well. Well, that's the question dealt with. And if you've got a question for On The Ledge, I'd love to hear from you. I will be rounding up a load of questions in one of my Q&A specials in an upcoming episode. So do drop me a line to ontheledgepodcast at gmail.com and I will do my my best to help you out.

And now it's time to get back to my chat about the cactus hunters tell us a bit more about going out with these cactus collectors in the field this must have been fascinating to actually get out there did you find yourself being drawn in in terms of experiencing the things that they were experiencing that that thrill and what were some of the things that you you look for?

Jared Margulies

So first of all, I have to give an absolute shout out to the really generous folks who welcomed me into their community.

[26:09] And I hope that for collectors, and, you know, sort of self-described cacto explorers, which is a term I write about, that folks feel like I, you know, I treated this work with respect. And, yeah, there was a whole lot of transference that happened in this research. So I absolutely became obsessed and became a cacto explorer myself in the process, right? So this is quite ethnographic research where I write about in the book, especially a trip in Brazil that I took with a group of what we can call cactus hunters, not because they were going out and poaching plants from the wild, but going out and seeking plants to see them and especially photograph them and encounter them and all the joys and thrills and pleasures and pains that come with looking for plants and sometimes finding them and sometimes not finding them in taking pictures of them. Yeah. So I, you know, I equipped myself with a camera like the rest of them and was out taking thousands of pictures of plants out in these areas. And, you know, there's these classic things about adventure and the desire to find the plant that's hardest to reach, kind of possessing the most pleasure in the finding. Um but absolutely i became you know i became part of the work was allowing myself to become, um in the throes of the obsession as well uh right with these folks um and so it was a really important part of the research for me to be able to understand you know where this pleasure kind of comes from in looking for these plants um and and uh it was also a really important opportunity for me to have in-depth meaningful conversations with collectors, for instance, about places where they say maybe, again, like feel like CITES is well-intended, but ultimately not doing a good job of protecting plants or why it was that they found these trade regulations really frustrating and to get just a more nuanced understanding and appreciation of what it was that they liked about particular species, why maybe they were really interested in one particular genus of plants, and not another, for instance.

[28:17] But yeah, it was a, it was a total, it was a total pleasure to get to do that work. It was a real treat. And, but also I think really important for understanding this topic.

Jane Perrone

Did you actually have success in finding some of these rare cacti or was it a journey of disappointment?

Jared Margulies

Both. And in one chapter in particular, I think it's chapter two, I write about this chasing of Uebelmannia buiningii, a species in the Uebelmannia genus of cacti. These grow in Brazil, and they're quite well known within the cactus collector community. As like a lot of Brazilian cacti, they can be a little bit tricky to keep alive well in northern latitudes, because they're kind of, you know, pretty hot weather plants. But yeah, so I write about this search for this, the last, as I call it, I think. And, you know, we're hunting and hunting and hunting, and it just intensifies the experience. And so, you know, I won't give it away. But, you know, we have this moment of both the encounter, but also the recognition that this plant is not doing well, necessarily, in the world. And that may in part have to do with land use changes but it also has to do with collector desires.

[29:30] And this recognition for instance of a Brazilian botanist that this plant, this place where we're looking for this plant for instance, it's just not there anymore and it's not there anymore because too many people know that it's there and one by one a collector quote unquote pinches a plant or maybe takes a lot for their own personal collections or to sell abroad potentially eventually, and they are absent. And so there was often a relationship between that, like the thrill of the hunt and also the disappointment that sometimes would follow. And there were also interesting moments where collectors would disagree on their emotions, where one collector might be like, look at how well this plant is doing, see how abundant it is. We should celebrate this. Whereas another person might say, well, yeah, but I was here 10 years ago. You should have seen it then. And right. So history and memory is also important and it also scientific study, right? And one of the biggest surprises of this research for me was just how little we still know about a lot of these plants in the world and their basic ecology, their basic population formation, the kinds of ecological relations they keep with other species, who are they're pollinators, for instance. So much information we don't know still about plants. And of course, there are plenty of plants out there still in the world that haven't been formally described in the scientific Western literature yet. And that in itself, to me, was remarkable.

[30:58] And so knowing that there's still all these plants out there that we know so little about was really something I wasn't expecting to learn in doing this research. So it gave me a real appreciation for botany, but it also made me concerned about how little emphasis there is in botany nowadays. And there's even, I think the Guardian wrote an article about this last year, about the decline of botany as an academic discipline. You know, a lot of botanical departments have shuttered their doors over the last 10 years or so. And so it's not a field of study that is necessarily doing particularly well within the modern university landscape.

[31:38] Jane Perrone

Absolutely. And I've always surprised that even well-known species of houseplants, you go to look up, oh, there must be some research about their pollinators. And often there just isn't. That research has not yet been conducted for plants that we feel like we know really well. But actually, as you say, they are a bit of a blank canvas when it comes to so many different aspects of their lives. And as you say, their interactions with other creatures and fauna and flora. We do need more botanists. That is for sure.

[32:13] When we spoke last time on the podcast, we were talking a little bit about the huge interest in the Dudleya succulent, which I think is probably the best known kind of issue to do with cactus poaching that I would put my finger on. And as you said earlier, this one is a bit of an anomaly because it doesn't fit the criteria that you listed earlier particularly well. Well, what's the situation? Have things changed since we last spoke in terms of are things getting better, worse? Is it still under huge threat? And where are we going with the preservation of this particular genus?

[32:54] Jared Margulies

For those who are less familiar, especially starting around 2016, 2017, there was this California Fish and Wildlife became aware that there was a sudden spate of illegal harvesting of the species Dudleya farinosa from the coastline of California up and down the coast. And they didn't understand where they were going or why or where the sudden threat was emerging from. It, a number of people who were caught taking these plants were either South Korean or Chinese foreign nationals. It was presumed that the demand was in South Korea, because that's where most of these, these folks were from. And I ultimately ended up going to South Korea to try to after doing about a month of research in California went to South Korea to try to better understand these dynamics. And, and I have an article about that. But I also, it emerged as a surprise in this research for me in that I was, I was originally thinking it might be a chapter of my book after I learned about it. But it ended up taking up, I think it's three chapters in the book now. So it really sprawls out. But one of the things that was interesting is, I mean, Dudley Farinosa, it's a beautiful plant, but it looks a lot for those who aren't initiated, like a lot of other succulents. It's pretty, it's rosette, it looks like a lot of echeverias to to the uninitiated eye. And in fact, a number of species of Echeverias probably are deadliest and haven't been reclassified yet.

[34:25] What I come to make an argument about is actually that there's a relationship between Dudleya farinosa, this relatively speaking plant that's doing well in the world. It isn't endangered. It has a wide distribution range up and down the coast. And a very special Dudleya that grows on Isla de Cedros off the coast of Baja, California in Mexico, Dudleya pacophytum. And I make this claim that Dudleya pachyphytum is what we could think of as the unique object or the sort of, as a colleague recently described to me, the white whale of the succulent world, which I like that as an expression. So, you know, it's a really extraordinary plant. I write about it as the panda bear of succulents and extremely limited habitat range.

[35:05] Absolutely stunning plant. It's got these really fleshy, thick leaves. The name itself, Dudleya pachyphytum, it's so different than other Dudleas, it's named for a different genera altogether, pacifitum. And so it tells us something about it. And what I make a claim about actually through this research is that what linked these plants together was that sort of Dudleya farinosa was the sort of more available, not quite the same, but accessible version of Dudleya pachyphytum. And so the desire for one species sort of transfers on to the other. The good news I would say is that this plant I think this trade is calming down after visiting Korea a couple of times now as part of this research the price of those plants has really crashed or at least Dudley a farinosa - one of the reasons it's crashed is that people are cultivating them and there's a lot of cultivation happening quite sustainably but what I also write about a lot is that you know this trade isn't actually just about South Korea or China but but it's a quite international trade.

[36:05] Unfortunately, desires of collectors are fickle. And one thing that I'm really worried about now is the sort of, a spiralling demand for a variety of South African succulents that seems to have sort of become the next hot thing for a lot of people with an Echinophytum genus, Lithops, any number of geophytes, so sort of underground bulb species.

[36:28] So one of the things that this work points to, and that I write about also is, you know, in many ways, these desires are quite arbitrary in how they latch onto a particular object of desire. But when we invariably get the thing, we recognize that actually that thing wasn't, it never was going to fully satisfy us in the way that we thought it might. And so we, of course, are sent out into the world again to find yet another new thing that might fill the void, so to speak. And so trying to get collectors to think a little bit more about that and how to think about how that could orient their desires in ways that are maybe more sustainable and more ethical in terms of our relationships with plants is an important question that I try to come and land on towards the end of the book.

Jane Perrone

I mean, that is probably late stage capitalism in a nutshell, actually. I think whatever you're interested in, whether it's plants or otherwise, this ties into something that I think about a lot, but it's great to have your academic gloss on this, is the idea of kind of looking at plants and plant purchasing and plant collecting mindfully and really thinking about our motivations when we're thinking about acquiring more plants.

Jared Margulies

You know, I might not have immediately brought up capitalism, but since you you did, I'll say something about that because you're right.

[37:38] And so part of what I'm trying to show in this book is that some of the ways that we've developed relationships with plants is being structured by the economic system in which we all broadly speaking live, which is a kind of late stage global capitalism. And one of the things that, and this is drawing on some of the work of others, especially Todd McGowan I write about, is you can see quite clearly through this repetitious desire for the next new plant, how well capitalism itself structures our desires as consumers, right? That always want the next new thing, you know? And so one of the things that I'm trying to draw out in this work is in recognising that in the failure of the next new thing to ever actually satisfy us in some way that we might imagine, we might be able to start to develop better relationships with these species by recognising they're never going to do the thing that we, we might imagine they will, but that doesn't mean that we can't have meaningful relationships with our houseplants. So it is important for people. Some people always ask me, like, oh, well, so are you saying that I shouldn't have houseplants or I shouldn't collect cacti? Like, no, of course not. I have houseplants. They're sitting right behind me right now. I have cacti. But I think it draws us into asking ourselves more meaningful questions about what those relationships look like and how they might look better in ways that support the species out in the wild to ensure they're flourishing into the future.

[39:00] Jane Perrone

Absolutely i think that is a very honourable goal and now i'm going to ask you an impossible question but i want you to wave your magic wand and imagine that you're in charge now of, resolving this issue in terms of the very practical problem of cacti being poached would there be a way that we could sort this out do we need to just revise cites Can we do something that will protect cacti effectively for the future?

Jared Margulies

Yeah, so we'll see if I get in trouble with this one. I personally think CITES needs revising as well intended of a piece of legislation as it is, and for a few reasons. But one of the problems with CITES is capacity. capacity and it's a challenging piece of legislation to regulate well that actually facilitates for instance plants getting out into the world when it's still bogged down in the kind of paperwork and regulation that it requires. I think it could be modernised in some important ways. I think it could be modernised in ways that moves away from what I would call a prohibitionary approach to conservation, which is simply saying like, the way we're going to do conservation is by stopping trade from happening. And this was not where I started my research from. And so I'm tiptoeing here a little bit. But I do think that there was a meaningful argument being made by a lot of the collectors I was spending time with, that prohibition isn't necessarily working very well, that really passionate collectors are going to find a way to get the plants that they want.

[40:46] Do you want it to happen legally or not? And while we might, for instance, want to just say, well, you should behave and not do things illegally, evidence suggests that that isn't necessarily effective. And we know from other criminological studies of other forms of illegal trade that prohibitionary responses don't usually work very well. And so I think there is a need for us to meaningfully engage with those lessons from other studies of illicit economies and ask ourselves, how could we develop a form of trade that both allows people to embrace their passions for caring for these plants in a way that structures the benefit most directly towards places where that money might do the most good? And I would argue that's in the countries of origin where these plants come from. And an uncomfortable reality is due to the long durée of colonialism and imperialism, the most profitable large-scale centers of plant cultivation and trade are not, for instance, in Mexico and in Brazil or in South Africa or Peru or Chile or you name the country, right? These are places where they've had their plants taken for very long periods of time during previous eras where CITES did not exist. And you have a scenario now where, say, the Dutch dominate mass cultivation of, say, cacti and succulents.

[42:16] There is no way that a tiny little new social development project in rural Oaxaca is going to be able to compete at a price point.

[42:26] With industrial grade production of the same species that was just taken, you know, 85 years ago. So one thing that we should think about then as plant consumers is where are we putting our money and how maybe could development projects say, try to support the work of keeping these plants in the ground in these places through putting money into sustainable cultivation and international trade, recognizing that that might mean that some plants, for instance, instance, get more expensive.

[42:57] And that they might come with a kind of premium. But you know, many ways consumers are familiar with this. Think about fair trade programs, or, for instance, those programs aren't without their criticisms, and whether or not they're actually how much they're helping is an open question that people research. But that does show us that, for instance, people are oftentimes willing to pay more for things that are seen as sustainable or ethically source and that has not translated into the plant industry yet in my own book i you know i didn't feel like i particularly majored on the impact of colonial botany but it was obviously part of the story and um a minority to be fair but it surprised it surprised me how a minority of people found that really difficult territory to go into um i guess this is partly being in a sort of a bit of an ivory tower about these things and assuming that everyone else agrees with you that actually you know colonial the legacy of colonial botany is something a we need to remember and b that was not necessarily positive for everybody involved particularly the as you say the people where these plants came from all of that borne in mind if listeners want to.

[44:15] Do something to help, or at least avoid getting caught up in this illegal trade.

Jane Perrone

What are the things that me and other regular Joes, Joannas, Johannases, whoever else might be out there thinking of buying some more plants, what do we need to be doing and not doing?

Jared Margulies

People often ask me like, oh, you know, do I need to start, if I go to like the local DIY store and I see succulents for sale for five bucks, like, should I be worried about where they came from? And the answer is no, like these plants are definitely just being cultivated, artificially propagated plants in some giant greenhouse somewhere, and you don't need to be worried that you're embroiled in illegal wildlife trade.

[44:56] Buying plants from, say, also reputable nurseries is, again, a pretty good way of making sure that you're not getting into trouble here. Getting cuttings and propagations from friends who are also growing these plants is another pretty safe way of doing that. Where people start to get into trouble is, for instance, if you start to getting into to the rarer materials, but also say, for instance, are buying from individual buyers and sellers online, there are things you can look for. For instance, if you're on, say, a place like eBay, and you're interested in a really rare species of Mexican cactus, and you see a 40-year-old cactus that looks really weather-beaten and kind of like it's had a life lived outside being sold from, say, Hungary, without any acknowledgement that this would require CITES export permits and says things like, don't worry, your package will be mailed to you discreetly. These are all signs that you may be entering into the space of illegal plant trade. I do think it's pretty easy to actually get familiarized with CITES. If you go to the CITES website, I think it's actually just CITES.org, you can read the appendices. There's an appendix list and you can see the plants. And if you're purchasing a plant internationally that's listed there.

[46:09] It should have CITES export permits. And if you're buying from someone who's making known mention of CITES export permits, then you're engaged in, you're potentially getting engaged in illegal wildlife trade, and you should not do that. Those are easy places to start. So I would just encourage people to think about purchasing from reputable buyers if you're going to buy a plant, steering clear of potentially dubious sourcing from, say, someone who you follow on Instagram.

[46:38] In starting to pay attention to what does the plant look like? Does it look, I think, especially for people who are familiar with houseplants, does it look like it was grown inside? Or does it look like it has the indications of a wild weather-beaten plant? Because they tend to look, especially with cacti and succulents, pretty different. And so becoming aware of those features is an important thing that people can do.

[46:58] Jane Perrone

Absolutely. And, you know, it extends to so many corners of the houseplant world. World cacti as well but also I'm thinking of hoyas, I'm thinking of orchids, I'm thinking of aroids, I'm thinking of begonias and all of those same issues arise in different ways in those particular plants and the warning signs are pretty much the same I think. This desire causes the rational part of people's brains to be slightly dampened and as you also said building collections via growing from seed you getting cuttings uh and so forth is is also uh i guess that's the that's the sort of the long game maybe.

[47:47] Jaed Margulies

Yeah, and briefly, one thing I'll say is, you know, a lot of cactus collectors in particular, because they're such slow growing plants will say, well, I would grow from seed, but I'm already 50 years old. So if I grow from seed, you know, I'm never going to maybe even see this Areocarpus flower, for instance. And I know, you know, I hear that, but I also think that there's a real magic of growing plants in your collection from seed and watching them grow from their inception. And that's definitely, I think, something that we should spend more time with in terms of the wonder of the temporality of plants is something to encourage and embrace, I think, rather than sort of want to speed up in the process.

Jane Perrone

I was absolutely fascinated by this book, Jared, and it's been really interesting to talk to you about it. As I say, I would encourage people to go and read The Cactus Hunters because we've literally just scraped the surface of what you get into in this book and some of the fascinating species and personalities that you talk to for the course of this book. So thank you very much for joining me. And we will make sure that all the details about the book and you are tucked away in the show notes at janeperrone.com. But thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and expertise. It's been fascinating.

Jared Margulies

It's such a pleasure. It's always really enjoyable to talk to you about these topics. So thanks for making time for talking to me.

[49:09] Music.

[49:15] Jane Perrone

That's all for this week's show i will see you in due course, and I do hope 2024 is already giving you plenty of delightful planty moments bye.

[49:29] Music.

[49:48] The music you heard in this episode was roll jordan roll by the joy drops, the road we used to travel when we were kids by komiku and whistle by benjamin banger all tracks are licensed under creative commons visit the show notes for details The music you heard in this episode was Roll Jordan Roll by The Joy Drops, The Road We Used to Travel When We Were Kids by Komiku and Whistle by Benjamin Banger. All Tracks are licenced under Creative Commons. Visit the show notes for details.

[50:05] Music.

I discuss the illegal trade in succulents and find out what makes cactus poachers tick with Dr Jared Margulies. Plus I answer a question about starry marks on a prayer plant.

This week’s guest

Dr Jared Margulies is assistant professor of political ecology in the Department of Geography at the University of Alabama. You can find him on Twitter and his academic papers are listed here. Listen to my first interview with Jared in On The Ledge episode 169 from January 2021. Jared’s book The Cactus Hunters is out now, published by the University of Minnesota Press.

Three things that are getting me through winter…

Looking for Uebelmannia buiningii amid a hillside of Pilosocereus aurisetus in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Photograph: Jared Margulies/University of Minnesota Press.

Chapters
0:01:37 Three things that are getting me through winter
0:04:00 Introducing Dr Jared Margulies and his book The Cactus Hunters
0:05:18 Interview part one begins
0:08:29 Factors that make certain species so desirable to collectors
0:17:15 Question of the week: starry holes in a prayer plant leaf
0:25:37 Interview part two begins
0:32:13 The ongoing threat to Dudleya farinosa from cactus poaching
0:34:25 Dudleya pachyphytum: The White Whale of Succulents
0:36:05 Spiraling demand for South African succulents
0:39:00 Revising CITES to protect cacti effectively for the future
0:42:57 Consumer Demand for Sustainable Plants
0:46:58 Tips for responsible plant purchasing
0:49:48 Music credits

Rare cactus Uebelmannia buiningii growing wild in Minas Gerais, Brasil. Photograph: Pierre Braun, licensed under Creative Commons.

Notes to read as you listen to the main interview…

  • CITES is the convention on international National Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. Find out more about CITES and how it works here.

  • Jared mentions hunting for the rare Brazilian cactus, Uebelmannia buiningii (pictured left). More pictures and info about this species here.

  • The article from the Guardian Jared mentions that addresses the decline of botany as an academic discipline is here.

  • Jared mentions two species of Dudleya - D. farinosa which is found ont he coast of California, and the much rarer D. pachyphytum, which is calls the ‘white whale’ of succulents. The latter grows on Isla de Cedros off the coast of Baja, California in Mexico.

  • There’s been a declining interest in poaching D. farinosa as growers step up propagation of this plant, however Jared is concerned about spiralling demand for a variety of South African succulents that seems to have sort of become the next hot thing for a lot of people with an Echinophytum genus, Lithops, and various geophyte species (succulents with underground storage organs).

Question of the week

Carolyn has a prayer plant with tiny pinholes that go right through the leaves - what is going on? I suspect the damage has been caused my red spider mites which are sucking the sap of the plant.

Their mouth parts - the chelicerae - pierce the surface of the leaf, causing holes. This also helps to dry out the leaves as the plant leaks sap from these holes.

The web page livingwithbugs.com has lots of excellent info on spider mite damage.

Want to ask me a question? Email ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com. The more information you can include, the better - pictures of your plant, details of your location and how long you have had the plant are always useful to help solve your issue!

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CREDITS

This week's show featured the tracks Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops, The Road We Use To Travel When We Were Kids by Komiku and Whistle by BenJamin Banger (@benjaminbanger on Insta; website benjaminbanger.com).

Cacti & succulentsJane PerroneDudleya, rare plantsComment