"... being rare often means your genetic resources are limited, and that makes you vulnerable to change. Small populations are also liable to be picked off by chance events, like a shrub growing up in front of you, or that new borehole for a new housing estate dug a few metres away. Conservation has recently come to the aid of many threatened plants, drawing many a little further back from the brink, but perhaps at some cost to their inherent wildness ... But the wise conservationist will aim at preventing flowers from reaching that state of extreme vulnerability in the first place."