Looking to the Future

We are all looking forward to a safer future following the peaks of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, the CPC home office has been working on projects that will be implemented in 2021 and beyond. Two new projects highlighting important aspects of CPC secured funding this year: Applied Plant Conservation Online course modules, funded by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and a study on seed longevity.

The Applied Plant Conservation Course promises to be a key resource in the Rare Plant Academy. The educational content—adapted from a week-long in-person course—will cover topics from seed collection to population monitoring, and from genetics to restoration. The course will expand the Rare Plant Academy’s training resources to prepare rare plant conservationists for the breadth of challenges they’ll face in coming years.

Providing training and tools for conservationists is just one function of the CPC network. It also connects data, scientific prowess, and applied conservation experience to advance work that saves plants. The pending seed longevity study, funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and implemented in the laboratories of the USDA’s National Laboratory for Genetic Resources Preservation, exemplifies this aspect of CPC. Across the network, institutions will re-collect seed from rare plant populations to compare with seeds collected from the same populations decades earlier. New and old seed will then be subjected to a suite of tests, including the examination of RNA integrity, to determine how each species holds up against time in storage. The results will help us understand how long seeds from different habitats and with different traits can be expected to survive in storage.

Josephine Bush

Josephine (Jody) Bush joined the board at the invitation of her sister-in-law Patricia Bush, a founding board member, who thought she would love it. Patricia was correct. With CPC Jody found a “modest and humble [organization] with a huge vision and an achievable goal.” She loved the organization, believed in the mission, and loved being around those who also love the plant world. Jody noted that the field trips were a particular highlight of any board meeting, stating that “being in undisturbed natural areas is one of the greatest pleasures in life – one can sense sustainability and integration, the rightness of place.”

Though retiring from the board, Jody is not retiring her support of CPC. From her Florida home she hopes to raise awareness and funding support for plants, specifically the 356 rare and endangered plants found in Florida. She recently helped secure CPC’s first gift towards this effort, a generous donation from Coleman and Susan Burke and is excited to see the effort grow.

Mary Ann Streeter

Long-time CPC board member Mary Ann Streeter recalls stepping into the role decades ago, when the network headquarters were located in the attic of Arnold Arboretum. During her time on the board, she learned about many of the National Collections species and helped bring Kentucky lady’s slipper (Cypripedium kentuckiense) and other rare species into the collection. Looking back on her many years of service, Mary Ann reflects, “I got out a whole lot more [out of it] than I put into it.” She brought some of what she learned on the CPC board to enrich her contributions to the board of the New England Wild Flower Society (now Native Plant Trust). She ends her tenure on the CPC board with a fascination for all rare plants within the National Collection and a lasting impression of the amazing board members with whom she served.

Lynde Uihlein

While Lynde remains a trustee, she is stepping down from her time as board chair. Lynde took the reins of chair from Peter Raven in 2018. During this time, she led the board through changes in staff leadership and strategic planning and successfully addressed the many challenges of leading a non-profit. Our incoming Board Chair, Dr. Barbara Millen, had these wonderful things to say about Lynde:

Lynde, there are so many ways to describe you – environmentalist, social welfare advocate, feminist, philanthropist, political activist, innovator in community co-op development, and yes, even Wisconsin dairy farmer. Yet these labels provide only a glimpse into your many years of service, hard work, and extraordinary accomplishments. For those present at this Board meeting, I would like to underscore a few of your many strengths which I have come to know and admire so deeply in the two years we have worked closely together. You are a wise and clear, careful thinker — a visionary. You’re good-humored, steady, compassionate, thoughtful, measured in your recommendations, and considerate of those offered by others. You are so very generous and ever gracious. You are supremely level-headed, unless really pushed, and then you’re strong, tactical, and decisive. You are all these things, and they have made you the very great leader you have been at CPC. It is my great good fortune that we have become wonderful friends – thanks to CPC.

We are especially grateful that as you transfer the leadership role, you have poised CPC for a very bright future. We are also incredibly pleased that you have agreed to stay very close as a Member-at-Large, an XCOM member, and a representative on the CPC-SDZG Management team.

For all these things, I applaud you on behalf of our Board and express our sincerest thanks. Finally, let me say very personally that I consider the friendship we have evolved during this process a very cherished gift. Thank you ever so much.

When did you first fall in love with plants?
I fell in love with plants on childhood walks in the forest and lakeside near our family summer cottages in Wisconsin, and in early adulthood in Massachusetts when I inherited the magical gardens created by an incredibly talented, self-trained landscape designer in the first home we purchased as a new, young family.

What was your path to becoming CPC board member (and eventual chair) and working to conserve native plants?
I joined a local GCA garden club, Noanett Garden Club, to connect with women in surrounding suburban communities.  I was a full-time public health professional working in preventive medicine in the downtown Boston area.  My schedule did not permit close contact and interactions with other community women.  The garden club was ideal because it introduced me to a large, diverse group of women with remarkable talents and a shared love of horticulture.  One of Noanett’s senior members, Polly Pierce, was a founding member of CPC.  Polly is a very skilled horticulturalist and passionate conservation advocate who shares her wisdom freely and humbly with our membership.  She guided me as I learned and eventually recruited me to CPC.

What are your personal reasons for working to save plants?
Our family has been involved in land and conservation for many years. During the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic, my mother’s father sought a location in northern Wisconsin with clean air, water, and outdoor space for safety and recreation. Quite by chance, he found a camp situated on a forested, clear lake on the outskirts of a small, unincorporated town that had been developed as a recovery area for former TB patients. He purchased it and brought his large, extended family there—first for safety, and eventually for annual recreation and enjoyment. It is a place we shared with an extended family, growing up and to this day.  The open, forested space helped establish my love of the outdoors and my profound understanding of and enthusiasm for the interrelatedness of plants, the outdoors, and human (and animal) health and well-being. This family land was eventually placed in one of the first land conservation initiatives in the United States. I manage it today for family, with the help of University of Wisconsin botanists, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, an arborist, and a small group of outdoor enthusiasts. In addition to managing its forests, we have developed open trails for hiking and cross-country skiing and have identified and nurtured more than 60 species of native plants. Being involved in conservation on a small scale in several areas where we have lived, I grew to appreciate the expertise, strength, and capacity brought to plant conversation by many local conservation groups, and particularly by CPC’s extraordinary leadership and its amazing network of Participating Institutions (PIs).

Please share an aspect of CPC or a CPC success story in which you take great pride.
The relocation of CPC from its founding site at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University (in Boston’s and Frederick Law Olmsted’s ‘Emerald Necklace’ 11-mile linear park system) to the St. Louis Botanic Garden and, most recently, to San Diego Zoo Global marked significant steps forward. Our network has grown phenomenally to more than 60 collaborating organizations. This PI network has enabled CPC to advance plant conservation science and protect more than 40 percent of the 4,400 rare plant species of North America. CPC’s expertise, performance, and leadership are increasingly recognized worldwide. CPC continues to innovate in many areas, including the design and implementation of a sophisticated and robust Rare Plant Academy web platform, which promotes plant conservation to scientists and the public and shares best conservation practices globally.  As a testament to its leadership, CPC was also awarded and asked to manage a $3 million grant from the California State Legislature to fund the California Biodiversity Initiative, the mission of which is to save the endangered plants of California.  The scope of state funding for this initiative is unique nationwide and lays the groundwork for CPC to establish a model for plant conservation and funding in other states across the country.  All of these areas speak to the strong, collaborative approach of CPC’s leadership team, its scientific excellence, its skill and productivity, and the enthusiasm it breathes into each one of its initiatives.

What about working to conserve plants has surprised you?
I’m surprised by the limited public awareness of the importance of plant conservation, especially its connection to human and animal health and the future of our planet.  If we want to engage the public in this work, we need to make these connections as clear as possible. Then we, as a nation, will understand the critical nature of plants and the roles we can—and hopefully will—play as individuals, organizations, and networks such as CPC.

What excites you about CPC’s future?
With continued focus on our mission, growth, and dedication, it is within our reach to save all plants from extinction. Progress toward this goal will be driven by the continued effective collaborations among conservation scientists in the U.S. and worldwide that are guided by CPC’s leadership. We will also be able to guide public understanding of the importance of plant conservation to human and animal health and environmental sustainability.

Dr. Millen is also on the Board of the Emerald Necklace Conservancy in Boston that includes the Olmsted park system, Arnold Arboretum and Franklin Park and Zoo.