The South China Morning Post on 9th September published an article saying that a craze for hardy succulents, which started in South Korea and spread to China, has resulted in organised gangs stripping California of a plant crucial to its fragile coastal ecosystem. It says that dudleya poaching was not unheard of in the past: a tractor-trailer had been discovered in Baja California, Mexico, filled with 4,746 plants, but those were an especially rare variety, found only on one small island. It explains that dudleya is a plant genus containing more than 45 species of succulent, native to the west coast of North America, from Oregon to Baja California, with a couple of species in Arizona, one of which also grows in Nevada and Utah. Some are common and a great number of the species are rare.
