She doesn’t look like much. A small gray-green ball, the epidermis apparently withered and drawn with concentric wrinkles from which a few peaks point out. The profane eye would pass its way without giving it a glance. The discerning eye would stop, subject to unparalleled wonder. But it is the greedy eye that must be feared. Whoever identifies this plant as rare, of Mexican origin, from the Lophophora family, with hallucinogenic properties. And the object of such trafficking that it is now threatened with disappearance.
Hence its presence in these walls, under this greenhouse, in this cage. It is one of the 34 plants that the National Museum of Natural History of Paris (MnHn) has just been entrusted to the Botanical Garden of Villers-lès-Nancy. A very precious sample of a vast collection numbering thousands of plants seized by customs at Roissy and Orly airports.
“Mafia networks”
This is the emerging part of a very worrying phenomenon. Plants, like wildlife, are the object of clandestine international trade, “part of mafia networks that are sometimes just as dangerous as those dealing with drugs or weapons. » Says Jean-Michel Doremus, one of the managers of the MnHn botanical greenhouses, who came to Nancy to accompany the very first donation of this kind in national history.
“In Madagascar in particular, it’s completely exploding. Because demand has never been higher. » Or the work of enthusiastic and knowledgeable collectors. Or the work of the nouveau riche who want these plants in the same way as the crown jewels: to attest to their great fortune.
“Not just elephants!” »
“However, at the other end of the chain, they do not measure the nuisance that this causes,” continues Jean-Michel Doremus. “Not only for plants, but also for humans. » Whether it is the pickers, ordered to comply, or the guardians of the nature reserves who would like to obstruct it. “Passed by arms. And their families with it, for the deterrent effect! »
A message that the specialist hammers home to a public that is still poorly informed on the issue. “It is, unfortunately, not only elephants, whales or turtles that are threatened with extinction by human activity,” confirms Frédéric Pautz, director of the Lorraine botanical garden. “The plants are also in great pain! »
Usually, any “product” seized is destined for destruction. By convention, however, French customs officers, increasingly aware of this new scourge, and trained to identify the plants concerned, entrust them to the MnHn. Including the greenhouse reserved for this use is today threatened with saturation.
Survivors
It is up to its teams to cultivate them. And to preserve its genetic capital. Often a very delicate mission. As the traffickers took no precautions during snatching or transport, the life expectancy of these traumatized castaways is sometimes very limited.
But some pass the tests. And it is from these survivors that 34 individuals, originating either from Mexico or Madagascar, were taken to enter the collections of the Jean-Marie Pelt garden. Including several varieties of the pachypodium genus, “which are found almost exclusively in Madagascar, a land of extremely diverse ecological niches”.
And who will now try to make a future for themselves in Lorraine, whether they like it or not.
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