NARGS Seed Exchange (was Seed Exchanges)

The NARGS home page which Louise mentioned (http://www.mobot.org/NARGS/)
also has an online viewable (and downloadable) copy of the seed list from
the 1996 Exchange. You can go directly to various subsections, of which
Iris is one. There were 87 Iris listings in the garden-collected section,
and 17 in the wild-collected. I encourage people to browse this list for
a better idea of what shows up in the NARGS Exchange - it's far from just
rock garden/alpine plants.

Preferential treatment for donors is a tough question. I understand the
feeling that it creates an "entry barrier" for newcomers who have nothing
to contribute (or feel they don't). That's how I feel on the CP list - I
have nothing to trade for the really exotic, because if I have it, it's
so common everyone else does too.

On the other hand, it's persuasive - as soon as I understood how the
NARGS Exchange worked, my first year as a member, I vowed to always be
a donor in the future just to get donor privileges. I hope I would not
have taken a free ride on the work of other donors and would have contrib-
uted even if I got no personal benefit, but it is a surprising amount of
work to collect, clean, label, and mail those seeds, and even with donor
rewards, contributors are very much a minority.

It helps that one doesn't have to contribute the rare, choice, and
exclusive stuff (to use a few Wayside adjectives) to count as a donor
(in the NARGS exchange anyway) - even if the seed you send is common as
dirt and was also sent in by scores of others, it counts, and you are
now part of the "privileged" group and have a real shot at some of the
rare, choice, and exclusive things. You are really rewarded for making
the effort to be a donor, not for what you grow or donate.


-- Steve Marak
-- SAMARAK@UAFSYSB.UARK.EDU or SAMARAK@UAFSYSB.BITNET
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