Video produced by Christina Murrey, 2009
Since 2000, two full-time staff members for the Millennium Seed Bank Project at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, along with their counterparts in the U.S. and 53 other countries, have gathered seeds for posterity from more than 24,000 of the world’s wild flowering plants. Led by the United Kingdom’s Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is celebrating a decade of work dedicated to setting aside seeds for future generations from 10 percent of the world’s wild flowering species.
“You really have to love plants a lot — love the reason you’re doing this, or you’d never keep going,” said Minnette Marr, who with Michael Eason and 100-plus volunteers at the Wildflower Center helped create a seed collection that hit the record books.
Thousands of seeds from nearly 25,000 native plant species have been collected and frozen down at locations that include Kew and the Wildflower Center as part of the $108 million Millennium Seed Bank Project — the largest seed bank dedicated to wild plant species in the world.
Read more about the Millennium Seed Bank Project.
