Saint or sinner sowing wild seeds?

[Elizabeth Winter]

Say, do you really like Rush Limbaug?  Just wondering.  Your thinking 
processes seem to run along the same lines.  
Ok, think about it.  The seeds dispersed in the wild have a very tough 
time successfully germinating and making it to maturity.  That is exactly 
why the mother plant needs to produce as many seeds as she can.  Each 
seed increases the chance of at least one plant -- thus the germ line of 
that particular type of plant -- surviving.  If a plant disperses 100 
seeds naturally and there is only a 20% chance that any particular seed 
will survive to maturity, then someone takes 15 seeds from that plant.... 
the chances of any seeds reaching maturity goes drastically down.  This 
may not be a problem for plants that are hugely abundant in an area -- 
but if a plant is endangered or rare in that particular area you may be 
contributing to wiping out that plant or -- worse yet -- there may be 
animals that depend upon that plant for their food source or the insects 
that use that plant as a food source.  It is far more complicated than 
just the individual plant.  There are whole ecosystems going on.  If the 
plant ends up dissappearing from an area, are you going to stand up and 
offer the plants that you have cultivated in your yard as a replacement?  
Are you sure that you know all the plants that are endangered or rare to 
an area?
  Laws really aren't made just to annoy us.  People do put thought behind 
them.  If you want to learn more about it read up on some ecology.  Maybe 
you will decide that an ecosystem is more important than a pretty garden 
this year.