Mexican Orchid Research Articles

Local illegal trade reveals unknown diversity and involves a high species richness of wild vascular epiphytes

Traffic of plants and animals of wild origin is a major threat to biological diversity creating a need for legal protection of traded species. Epiphytic vascular plants are a diverse guild which provides the horticultural market with many species. Many epiphytes are under protection intended to stop illegal trade at international and local levels. To measure the richness and volume of the epiphytes that are traded illegally on a local level, we monitored an illegal sale point in Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico for 85 weeks. We recorded 27 traders, 207 species and 7598 plants. Nineteen species were known for Mexico but not native to Veracruz; two others had been collected in Veracruz but had never been reported before for Mexico. About 25% of epiphyte richness in Veracruz and 47% of the State’s epiphytic orchids are traded illegally. Most of the species traded could have been harvested in lower montane cloud forest (105 species), however all vegetation types of central Veracruz are potential epiphyte sources. Twenty-seven species protected by Mexican law were traded, along with 41 species endemic to Mexico and six endemic to Veracruz. We concluded that on a local level, the richness and volume of epiphytes illegally traded are high; in fact, the volume of orchids traded equals the annual average volume of legal Mexican orchid exports. Illegal epiphyte trade occurs worldwide, making necessary crucial increases of protective measures and the development of sustainable ways of harvesting epiphytes.

Mexican Orchids

Mexican Orchids

New and Interesting Mexican Orchids

of Erik Oestlund and if possible to secure it as an addition to the Ames Herbarium at Harvard University. The Oestlund heirs gave the collection to the Ames Herbarium and it was forwarded to Cambridge. The collection was carefully studied and has now been incorporated with the Ames Herbarium. The Oestlund collections were made principally by Otto Nagel, Juan Gonzalez and Mr. Oestlund, with the occasional help of others. The herbarium is by far the largest single collection of orchids ever made in Mexico, consisting of about four thousand numbers, many of them in duplicate. The serial numbers run from 500 to 8037. A large portion of the numbers in the series, however, are not represented by specimens. Papers describing novelties from the Oestlund herbarium have appeared occasionally in this journal as the study and naming of the collection progressed. This paper describes the last of such novelties, as well as some others that were discovered in other collections during the time that the Oestlund collection was being studied. A complete set of the Oestlund specimens, as well as the types of all of the novelties described from it, is to