286 ■ CHAPTER 16 Plants, Fungi, and Protists
BIODIVERSITY
Southeast Asia. In fact, the illegal trade of plants
is often called the “invisible wildlife trade”
be cause it is so rarely discussed or documented,
in contrast to the widely publicized illegal trade
of animals and animal products such as elephant
ivory and rhinoceros horns.
Plants often take second-tier status behind
animals—it’s easier to get the public to care about
a fuzzy baby tiger than a sprouting redwood tree—
but their biology is no less wondrous. In Chapter 15
we explored the microscopic worlds of the Bacte-
ria and Archaea domains of life. Here, we begin
to meet the Eukarya, consisting of four kingdoms:
Protista, Plantae, Fungi, and Animalia. Animalia
will be covered in detail in Chapter 17.
The defining feature of the Eukarya is a true
nucleus: instead of floating free in the cytoplasm,
eukaryotic DNA is enclosed in two concentric
layers of cell membranes that form a nuclear
envelope. In addition to the nucleus, eukary-
otes have a great variety of membrane-en-
closed subcellular compartments, many of
which are specialized for various tasks—such
as sending messages, producing energy, orJ
acob Phelps spent a lot of his time in Thailand
trying not to arouse suspicion. Walking
among vendor stalls at wildlife markets in
Bangkok, the tall, thin graduate student stopped
occasionally to help a trader trim dead leaves
off his plants, or to chat about the weather.
Wherever he walked, plants surrounded him—
hanging from the ceiling, stuffed into boxes,
piled into mounds.
Phelps was careful about the questions he
asked, because he was there to document ille-
gal activity. The market traders had tens of
thousands of plants for sale, most of which
weren’t supposed to be there. But when Phelps
cautiously asked whether the plants were wild
or rare, the traders were surprisingly relaxed.
Concern for plant conservation, and enforce-
ment of trading laws, is so limited that illegal
sales occur openly at public markets across
Southeast Asia.
Even Thailand’s wildlife trade management
authority at the time claimed that illegal trade
in ornamental flowers was limited, “found in
small case [sic] in some parties.” But Phelps
was familiar enough with plants to know that
most of what he saw in the Thailand markets
were wild, protected plants that were illegal to
sell: the charismatic pink blossoms of Dend-
robium orchids; the dense, fragrant plumes of
Rhynchostylis flowers; the delicate, wavy petals
of the coveted lady slipper orchid, Paphiope-
dilum. Plant enthusiasts prize such species for
their beauty, fragrance, and rarity. Coveted
wild orchids make up more than 80 percent of
the plants traded at these unregulated markets
(Figure 16.1).
As a graduate student at the National Univer-
sity of Singapore, Phelps received the blessing of
his PhD supervisor, plant ecologist Ted Webb,
to conduct an extensive survey of the illegal
plant trade at the four largest plant markets in
Thailand. It was the first time such a survey had
been conducted of plant markets anywhere inJacob Phelps is an environmental scientist at
Lancaster University in the United Kingdom,
studying illegal wildlife trade and tropical
deforestation.JACOB PHELPS
Figure 16.1A plant market in Thailand
Jacob Phelps visited plant markets like this
one to conduct research on illegal trade in
endangered orchid species.