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Paph delenatii was first discovered in Vietnam in the early 1900s. Only one plant survived, at the French firm of Vacherot and Lecoufle, and most plants grown today are descended from that one cultivar. The species, believed to be extinct in the wild, was rediscovered in Vietnam in the 1990s causing quite a stir. Many of these plants were rumoured to have larger blooms and darker pouches and collecting began in earnest. It has been estimated that about six tons of plants were collected from the wild and exported to Taiwan. From here, they were re-exported to Japan,the USA, and Europe via Hong Kong. Even though exports from Vietnam were stopped in 1995, illegal trading continues. Crosses using these new cultivars seem to have been available in Japan for a while, and are now being offered by growers in the USA. Though demand for wild-collected plants appears to have diminished, their populations have been seriously decimated in the wild. Luckily, much of the delenatii habitat remains inaccessible, and this is probably their best hope for survival. Conservation and commercialism may not always go hand-in-hand. To read more about paph delenatii in the wild, see the article, "Endangered Vietnamese Paphiopedilums" by Dr. L.V. Averyanov et al. in Orchids magazine, December 1996. |
