United in Desire
THERE IS A MORBID THRILL in searching for the last of something. I considered this while looking for the critically endangered cactus Uebelmannia buiningii among the quartz hills of the Serra Negra in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Uebelmannia is a small genus of Brazilian cactus described by Dutch botanist Alfred Buining. The genus is named for the Swiss cactus collector and former race car driver Werner J. Uebelmann, a lifelong collector, nurseryman, and devotee of Brazilian cacti. These Eurocentric tendencies in species naming are common in botany, a field whose entwinement with settler colonialism and imperialism runs deep.
I was travelling with a group of self-described European “cactoexplorers” for several weeks through the states of Minas Gerais and Bahia, Brazil, a region with some of the highest cactus species richness and endemism in the world. I was invited to join the search as part of the research for my book on the global illicit trade in cactus and succulent plants.
Thanks to our guide, an expert Brazilian botanist, we were equipped with the precise coordinates of one of the few known locations of U. buiningii, so our prospects for seeing it were high.
Unlike other species I had already encountered in Brazil, U. buiningii isn’t primarily threatened by farmland development or urbanization. According to species experts it is threatened above all by illegal collection for international trade. U. buiningii’s habitat is restricted to an area of less than 40 square kilometers, with just a few small and isolated subpopulations remaining. The type locality for the species, or the location where a plant was first taken and used to formally describe the species on an archived herbarium sheet, is now absent any remaining plants.
Political ecologist Jared Margulies takes readers inside the intriguing world of cactoexploring and unravels the similar passions that animate both illicit cacti collectors and conservationists in our Autumn 2023 print issue cover story.
|
