As Seen on Rare Plant Academy

During CPC’s 2020 National Meeting, Alex Seglias of Denver Botanic Garden presented her work examining the seed longevity of alpine species from the Colorado Rocky Mountains. To evaluate how well four species would survive in traditional seed banking conditions, Alex used accelerated aging techniques followed by germination tests. As with Alpine species studied in Italy and Australia, Alex found significant effects of the aging treatment on germination time and rates, indicating that these species would be short-lived in cold storage. Her study points to the importance of assessing environmental and evolutionary factors that may reduce seed longevity in storage, rather than assuming that all species survive for decades in seed banks.