Conservation

Plant Rescue and Refuge

Plant biodiversity is essential to the resilience of our planet’s ecosystem, and the UC Botanical Garden plays a critical role in rescuing and preserving many threatened plant species.

Throughout our geographic collections, more than 2,000 plants are now rare—or even extinct—in their natural habitats. The causes of this scarcity are many, but loss of habitat and competition with invasive species are among the primary reasons. Other threats include climate change, disease, and illegal trade.

We’re committed to providing a plant collections refuge, and to reintroducing these vulnerable plants back into the world. Our conservation effort is largely focused on native California flora, especially here in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Partners in Conservation

Of the plants that arrive in the United States illegally, some simply lack the correct permits and others have been sent with the intention to circumvent protections. Such illegal shipments can enter custody of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service through its Plant Rescue Center network. Since the Garden joined this network in 1982, hundreds of plants have been entrusted to our care, including more than 500 cycads. Conservation seed banking and restoring plants in habitat is done in partnership with many other organizations as well, including the California Department of Fish & Wildlife, the Bureau of Land Management, California State Parks, the California Native Plant Society, California Plant Rescue, and environmental consulting firms.

A Conservation Focus

Because California is one of the world’s biodiversity hot spots, our conservation focus is on the state’s rare and/or endangered native flora, especially in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. The Garden joined the national Center for Plant Conservation (CPC) in 1987, which is a network of more than 75 botanical gardens and other partners dedicated to preventing extinction in the United States. The CPC is recognized as a global leader for setting standards of practice in plant conservation; its  goals include creating genetically representative conservation seed banks and working to restore endangered species in nature.

The Garden holds four collections of significant taxonomic diversity that have been accredited by the Plant Collections Network, a program of the American Public Gardens Association and U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service. These collections include cycads, ferns, magnolias, and oaks. Data from three of these collections (cycads, magnolias, and oaks) are also incorporated into the Botanic Gardens Conservation International consortia.

Protecting Plants for the Long Term

We use four methods to preserve plant material:

Seed bank: Primarily California native species, backed up at the National Laboratory for Genetic Resources Preservation (a federal facility in Fort Collins, Colorado). We also collaborate with other gardens in California.

Pollen bank: Cycad pollen can last for many years in frozen storage and can be made available for pollination in a manner similar to that of zoo studbanks.

Frozen leaf tissue bank: Plants may be short-lived in cultivation, but we can preserve their DNA for study by storing it until needed.

Herbarium documentation: Plant specimens are pressed, dried, labeled and stored in herbaria at UC Berkeley and other institutions.

Banner: Amsinckia grandiflora. Photo: Holly Forbes