Living Plant Conservation Collections: A Guide for Public Gardens

Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) has published a new guide, Building living plant collections for conservation. The guide features example cases from Montgomery’s work, including genetic evaluation of the Sinkhole Cycad.

This guide is designed to provide a general blueprint to help strategically develop conservation collections. Many endangered plants are considered exceptional species, which do not store well in seedbanks, and thus must rely on living collections for conservation.

Quoting from the guide:

Your garden has the power to ensure extinction isn’t an option by strategically building and using your collection to support conservation of threatened species. In doing so, you contribute to the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation and support global efforts to halt the continuing loss of plant diversity.

The guide is the result of a recently completed project funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, involving MBC, BGCI, and USDA’s Chapman Field.

The guide can be downloaded free from BGCI’s website. For more information on this project and additional resources, please see Montgomery’s Collections Genetics page.

Institute of Museum and Library Services