A friend of mine recently sent me the pictures below. This is a sad sight which unfortunatelly is still commonly seen in the roadsides of many areas in Eastern Brazil:
The cacti species in the pictures above are
Melocactus salvadorensis (the more globular Melos, with shorter spines and shorter cephalia),
Melocactus ernestii (the more elongated Melos, with long spines and tall cephalia),
Pilosocereus gounellei,
Pilosocereus catingicola,
Arrojadoa penicillata,
Stephanocereus leucostele,
Tacinga palmadora and
Tacinga inamoena.
It is common to see dozens of mature specimens of
Melocactus with well-developed cephalia being offered for sale as ornamental plants along the main highways that cross the regions where these plants grow. The plants are collected in the surrounding countryside by the poor local people, and exposed at the roadsides for sale as ornamentals.
The local people are not to be blamed; actually, I pity them, because I know how difficult the situation is in these poor areas of the countryside, and the local people are only trying to supplement their sparse income by exploiting the natural resources available in their environment.
However, the collection of mature
Melocactus specimens is highly detrimental to the natural populations of the
Melocactus species. Melocacti only begin to reproduce when they reach a certain size, a process that in the case of the larger bodied species can take more than a decade. Only at maturity the cephalium develops, from which the flowers and subsequently the fruits are produced. Since
Melocactus does not offset unless damaged at the apex, the propagation of new plants relies entirely on reproduction by seeds. Continuous collection of adult specimens can therefore wipe out entire populations: if every year all cephalium-bearing plants are removed from a population, there will be no production of seeds to replenish the population seed-bank, and each time fewer and fewer seedlings will be generated to replace the adult plants that are being taken. Thus, the repeated collection of cephalium-bearing plants will ultimately result in the complete demise of the natural populations.
I am very worried to see that now the stands of
Melocactus being offered for sale by the roadsides is composed of mostly
Melocactus ernestii plants. A few years back the most commonly species seen for sale was
Melocactus salvadorensis, what makes sense because this is a species that grows in soil between shrubs in the region, thus in more easily acessible areas what facilitates the collection of plants. On the other hand,
Melocactus ernestii grows only on rock outcrops, which are very big and steep in this region, and thus the plants of this species are less easily accessible for collection. The fact that now
Melocactus ernestii is more common in the stands of plants for sale than
Melocactus salvadorensis means that the last species has become rarer, what forced the collectors to start collecting
Melocactus ernestii in the rock outcrops.
Melocactus salvadorensis is quickly becoming an endangered species in the region.
Cheers,