Date: Mon, 08 May 2000 16:37:13 -0700 From: chamb@u.arizona.edu To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com Message-Id: <aabcdefg1444$foo@default> Subject: UK plant conservation
Info on plant conservation in the UK does not fall into my hands
often, but I have just now come across the April 2000 issue of Kew
Scientist, a newsletter covering a variety of topics about conservation
efforts at Kew Botanic Gardens.
"Seed samples from 93% of the UK's native higher plant flora are now being
stored in the seed bank at Wakehurst Place. The seeds have been collected
over the past three years as Phase I 'The UK Flora Programme' of the
Millennium Seed Bank Project. The UK target of the project was to collect
seed samples of from almost every species of native vascular plant that
produces bankable seed. This meant collecting seeds from a further 800
species to add to the 570 or so species already stored in the bank prior to
1997. More than 250 individuals from around 35 organisations were involved
in the collaborative collecting programme and at the end of the final
collecting season in 1999 the Seed Bank had received 1,532 collections
representing 768 species."
The article goes on to discuss seeds which present special problems in seed
banking, and some research on techniques for preserving these. The
newsletter also notes that with a flora of only 1,400 species of seed
plants, the UK flora is poor compared to, for example, the Ducke Reserve in
Amazonia, supporting more species in only 100 square kilometers.
Kew also is working to support conservation projects in UK Overseas
Territories. There is an article on a conservation project in the Falkland
Islands for Calandrinia feltoni. Another story discusses African seed
conservation for "recalcitrant tropical forest trees", with a photo of the
weird fruit & seeds of Sclerocarya birra.
No mention of CPs, but the photo on the cover shows a woman chest deep in a
watery marsh collecting seeds of Potamogeton acutifolius. Utricularia has
got to be somewhere nearby...
Michael
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Jan 02 2001 - 17:35:08 PST