Inside the Illegal Cactus Trade | The New Yorker

As the craze for succulents continues, sometimes the smuggler and the conservationist are the same person.

The succulent Dudleya pachyphytum is known as the Cedros Island live-forever. It has also been called the panda bear of plants, on account of being so cute. It has sweet, chubby leaves, is pale, and is powdered as if with confectioner’s sugar, and its shape is most often that of a rose. D. pachyphytum grows slowly, as succulents generally do, and many specimens would fit in your coat pocket. They look like they belong in a Miyazaki film, or, potted, in the window of a cool doughnut shop in Brooklyn. In the wild, D. pachyphytum grows in only one place: the Isla de Cedros, in the Pacific Ocean…

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