The Gardener's (Moral) Dilemma: an ethics debate

In My Humble Opinion
1

Note: It’s about gardening, but I put this here instead of Cafe Society since I’m really looking for people to be santimonious and judgemental. :smiley: So c’mon, Dopers: bring down the full force of your smugness and moral superiority! I know you can do it! Lord knows you’ve done it before … Bonus points if you can paint both A and B as being in the wrong.
Gardener “A” is pleased with the progress of her new seedlings - they’re desert willows, and she’s wanted them for some time. She starts showing them off to Gardener B, who clucks politely and admires their leaves, then asks A how she got them, knowing A is broke and has no money to purchase either seeds or plants.

A, blithely: “Oh, I got the seeds off some of the willow trees growing at BigBoxCorporateStripMall. You know, the ones in the parking lot everywhere?”

B, astonished and indignant: “You STOLE those seeds!”

A: “But … but … it’s not like anyone else would use them! And they can’t grow in a parking lot anyway.”

B: “They didn’t belong to you. You took something that was not yours, ergo, you stole.”

A: “That area is landscaped! Any seeds that fell and germinated would have been treated as weeds and sprayed/plucked/smothered with mulch!”

B: “You had no authority to go and cut things off a tree that’s not yours.”

A: “I just broke off some seed pods. It’s not like I cut off a branch…”

B: “Thief!”

A: “Bitch.”
So. What say ye, moral compasses of the Internet? Is A a thief? Is B a bitch? (No poll coming, because, frankly, I can’t be arsed.)

(Note: the above conversation took place entirely in my head. I imagined the scenario, it spun out for a bit . . . and then it occured to me: You know who likes to pass judgement on other people? Dopers!)

2

Huh. Turns out I CAN be arsed, after all. :slight_smile:

3

Not a thief. I might think she was a thief if she stole them from a plant that was for sale, though. And it would be wrong for her to damage the plant (I’m assuming “broke off a seed pod” is what the plant is supposed to do, or that it doesn’t affect the plant’s health or looks.) Don’t some states have a law allowing you some foraging rights anyway?

4

A) The seeds were not going to be used by BigBox in any fashion, for growing or selling; they would be totally wasted.
B) The seeds were not in short supply- she wasn’t depriving the owner or the owner’s friend from breaking off a few pods for themselves.
C) Gardener A is broke, so she wouldn’t have paid BigBox for the seeds even if they were for sale.

I read a parable in which a vendor tried to charge people for smelling his wonderful food. I think that the seeds are as ephemeral and valuable as the scent of fine cooking, and there is no reason for A not to take advantage of them.

5

Isn’t the taking of anything that doesn’t belong to you theft? If someone wants to throw something away, but hasn’t or is too lazy to, it doesn’t give A the right to do it.

I voted that it was theft, but with a qualifier: in this case, stealing’s ok

6

I used to make a lot of jams and jellies and was always on the lookout for wild plums and chokecherries. In order to find them one must tromp about on the prairie and in the woods. And the deal is that that land belongs to somebody.

So what I’d do when I found some is to go to the landowner and ask permission to pick the berries in exchange for a couple of jars of homemade treats. That worked well in the culture around here.

Most of the time I could find what I wanted in parks or wildlife preserves and so it was a matter of talking to the park administrator who was more than anxious to have homemade goodies. And it prevented me getting shot by those people who hang old tires on their fences painted with “No truspasing” notices.

Before I started practicing this hobby I researched the legality in my state and found out that mushrooms and berries may be harvested from state and local parks as long as the plant itself is not harmed. So I voted that it wasn’t illegal.

The items are fungible, I think. Seeds would be as well but I’d recommend that to CYA a person should check with the landowner first as a means of preventing a misunderstanding. And as a courtesy.

7

Thanks for the opportunity to clarify: desert willows make long, skinny pods full of fluffy seeds. In the dead of winter, the pods fall to the ground, where they either rot, germinate, or are eaten by birds.

I hadn’t thought of that angle when I typed up the OP: desert willow seeds are considered an important food source for native desert birds, so A. could be seen as stealing their food. On the other hand, there aren’t many of those in BigBoxCorporateStripMall parking lots! :smiley:

8

Or, by cultivating a few of these seeds, A is providing additional food sources for the native desert birds.

I agree it is always nice to ask the landowner, as I have done to gain rose cuttings.
In this hypothetical scenario however, I think grabbing a pod or two is fine. It is also in the best interest of the native birds!
Not a bad thing, really.

9

If taking seeds from a commercial planting like at a mall, department store, bank or such is stealing, then a ton of gardeners like yours truly are guilty guilty guilty.

Doing the same thing at a botanical garden, national park/state forest is verboten. Doing so at a garden center or taking seeds from some homeowner’s property is theft, unless you ask permission.

There may not be ironclad differences in all cases, but my take is that they could care less at the mall if you harvest some seeds as long as you don’t damage the planting. In the other instances you’re screwing with the ecology, getting away with something without paying or taking the seeds that another gardener may have been counting on harvesting.

Taking cuttings* or digging up something is a no-no in almost all circumstances, a possible exception being cuttings of a non-rare plant in a vacant lot or similar setting.

*The famous (and now deceased) English gardener Christopher Lloyd referred to the product of illicit pruning in this manner as taking “Irish cuttings”. I suspect his Irish readers did not appreciate the term. :dubious:

10

This is a good example of the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. The letter of the law says that anything you take that doesn’t belong to you is stealing. The spirit of the law says “C’mon, she created new life out of seeds that otherwise would have gone to waste.”

Back when I was in college, a friend of mine and I were out for a walk late at night, and we passed by a dumpster behind the Fine Arts building. We looked inside, and saw that it was filled with pottery, mostly broken, plus a lot of obvious trash. We managed to find a couple of pieces that looked interesting, and took them. Sure enough, we were stopped by the University Police and hauled down to the station. The cop gave us a harsh lecture on property rights, then released us. He probably kept the pottery for himself.

11

I don’t understand that definition. Stealing involves more than taking something that doesn’t belong to you. If you find a $20 dollar bill on the sidewalk, are you stealing it? If you go to the dump and pick up something, are you stealing it?

Stealing involves removing something of value from another individual. You aren’t stealing if you take someone’s trash. The law may disagree, but, even then, the risk of prosecution is minimal. The default is that such things are okay.

Defining stealing where it can be okay defeats the purpose of calling it stealing.

12

You don’t know the owner of the $20. A lost item is different from an item the owner knows where it is. And anything dumped at a landfill has already been given up, though I’m not sure of the law says the government owns it now

13

It’s not stealing. My part time job is at a garden center, and we encourage people to take seed pods when they occur on the occasional specimen in the center. By doing so you foster an interest in gardening, generate goodwill towards the customer, and ensure that they will come back to you for further purchases and advice. Fer christ’s sake, 95% + of all seed will die anyway if not properly planted. That is why trees make so much. Unless the bigbox store has a program in which they are harvesting, germinating and selling the seedlings, it is not theft. It’s no different then picking up a pretty fall leaf.

14

I wouldn’t consider it so. I would say that morally theft is taking something that is of value to the owner. The reason why theft is morally wrong is because you deprive someone of something that is of value to them, not because you benefit from it. If the owner doesn’t care about it, then taking it is not theft.

15

They were left to rot in a public area. She wasn’t trespassing, the seeds were not valued by the property owner and would have otherwise gone back into the soil. No theft there.

16

Technically, I’d call it stealing, as in she didn’t have permission, even implied permission, to take the pods. However, IMO, this is one of the smallest instances of stealing that I can think of. I think that the benefits (more plants) outweigh the possible drawbacks.

Occasionally I’ve asked if I can deadhead marigolds, for instance. There’s a restaurant that I go to now and then, and for whatever reason, their marigolds had gone to seed. I happen to like marigolds, and I don’t care what sort I get, so I asked a manager if I could deadhead a few. She said that I was welcome to deadhead them ALL, if I wanted to, and be welcome to the seeds. I’ve done this in a few other places, as well. I’ve never been refused.

17

De minimis non curat lex applies here: The law does not concern itself with trifles. This is especially relevant because the pods are a renewable resource as long as the BigBox maintains the plants. Finally, the value of the plant is not in the pods, it’s in the flowers and leaves, which actually look nice. (By that standard, taking a picture of the plants is closer to stealing than taking the pods. Hmm.)

Also, another angle: The pods are garbage, as far as BigBox is concerned. Since when is it considered theft to pick up garbage you can use?

18

Generally, here in the U.K. the gardener is fine. Cite.

19

This is my stance. I am amazed by the people I’ve run into who think it’s acceptable to take seeds/cuttings from plants for SALE (because to me that is very obviously theft and it’s harming the people trying to make a living from the garden center). However, nobody is harmed by taking some stray seeds in a parking lot, so I see nothing immoral about it.

20

If someone picks a food wrapper off of the parking lot at BigBoxCorporateStripMall, and throws it away, is that stealing? If not, than taking seeds that have fallen on the ground isn’t stealing either.