Conservation
Seed Bank
The Wildflower Center is the first non-governmental organization to be invited to participate in the Millennium Seed Bank (MSB) Project, a global plant conservation effort developed by the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew, United Kingdom. The MSB Project coordinates work by more than 30 organizations in 20 countries worldwide. With a project budget of about $120 million, it is one of the most ambitious plant conservation initiatives ever, aiming to conserve seeds from about 10 percent of the world's plant species by the year 2010.
Millennium Seed Bank Video
More than a dozen staff and volunteers of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center ventured to West Texas last fall as part of this global seed-banking mission. They spent a weekend at The Nature Conservancy’s Davis Mountains Preserve to collect targeted species that include burr seed cucumber.
Pressures on the environment are so great in many areas that it is not always possible to conserve plants in their natural habitats. While we cannot always guarantee the safety of a plant in even the best-protected nature reserve, plant seeds can be kept safely for hundreds of years in a seed bank. Should a plant become extinct in the wild, with its seeds stored in a seed bank, it will not be lost forever. Seed banks are also very efficient and cost-effective means of conserving plants, because the seed occupies very little space and requires only periodic attention.
The Wildflower Center is charged with Texas seed conservation, which is no easy task in a state that is larger than some countries. It focuses its efforts on collecting and storing the seeds of common species of plants, not those that are endangered or threatened, which makes it part of the only global program of this kind. The goal is to try to collect 10,000 to 20,000 seeds of each targeted species. If they were to try to collect that many rare or endangered plants they could almost take a population into extinction.
The seed collection program is built primarily on the cooperation of private landowners and the hard work of more than 100 trained volunteers. Volunteers in the field who can watch and monitor the plants make it possible for the project to collect in more places at once. Many landowners get excited about the project and become seed collectors themselves. Another key part of the project is outreach and education, which emphasizes the importance of a diverse native plant population. Native plants play critical roles in the ecosystem, providing wildlife habitat, contributing to water quality, flood management and soil stability.
