Save Plants

Florida lantana (Lantana depressa var. floridana)

While working at Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park to collect fresh seed of the beach star sedge (Remirea maritima) for the IMLS Seed Longevity Study, Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden’s team also bagged the park’s Florida lantana (Lantana depressa var. floridana) population. Each of the inky metallic blue fruits of this coastal dweller contains a single seed. The shrubby plant with bright yellow flowers is found only on the east coast of Florida and is state listed as endangered. Now, at least one seed collection protects this globally imperiled plant for the future!

Sweet-smelling Monardella (Monardella beneolens)

The seed collection of sweet-smelling monardella (Monardella beneolens), a California endemic, in October was a hard-earned success for California Botanic Garden’s Senior Conservation Botanist Duncan Bell. Initial attempts to conserve seed of the species in 2020 were thwarted. The first population targeted proved too small for a collection, and the largest population (100 individuals!) was successfully scouted but later barred from entry due to wildfires at collection time. This year, wildfire again threatened the possibility of collection, but the team managed to get to the population a few days before the first snowfall. Duncan and team endured a 4-wheel driving adventure – crossing a river early in the morning and having the water immediately freeze on the truck – and hiked up to 12,000 feet elevation, where they found the sweet smell of success with the aptly named sweet-smelling monardella.

Allison Alberts, Ph.D. (San Diego, CA)

Allison served as Chief Conservation and Research Officer at San Diego Zoo Global, where she established a team dedicated to plant conservation and a native plant seed bank. She is Board President of Eden Project USA, serves on the Advisory Board of the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, and is a Senior Advisor at Ecoleaders LLC. Allison is a member of the IUCN Conservation Planning and Conservation Translocation Specialist Groups and advises the Reverse the Red initiative. She serves on the board of the San Diego Natural History Museum and is a long-time member of the California Native Plant Society. In 2015, she was honored with the Athena Pinnacle Award for excellence in recognition, promotion, and mentorship of women in science.

“Plants are essential to life on our planet and we cannot survive without them.  They make life possible, providing us with clean air to breathe, food to eat, medicine to heal, and so much more.  At the same time, they nurture our souls through their endless beauty and variety.” – Allison Alberts

Damon E. Waitt, Ph.D. (Chapel Hill, NC) – Trustee

Dr. Damon Waitt is Director of the North Carolina Botanical Garden and Professor of the Practice in Biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As Director, Damon has broad responsibility for overall leadership and management of the North Carolina Botanical Garden and for ensuring that the Garden fulfills its mission to inspire understanding, appreciation, and conservation of plants and to advance a sustainable relationship between people and nature. Damon came to the North Carolina Botanical Garden from the Lady Bird Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas, where he served as Senior Director and Botanist from 2001-2015. Damon has served on the Invasive Species Advisory Committee of the National Invasive Species Council, as President of the Texas Academy of Science and the Texas Invasive Plant and Pest Council, and as board chair of North Carolina’s Plant Conservation Program. Damon holds a Ph.D. in Botany from the University of Texas in Austin, an M.S in Botany from Louisiana State University Baton Rouge and a B.S. in Biology from Tulane University.

“It is important to save plants because plants will be essential to solving the grand challenges of this and the next century, including climate change, sustainability, food security, and preservation of ecosystem services. Safeguarding rare plants through the activities of the CPC is the fundamental first step to protecting all plants upon which all life depends.” – Damon Waitt

Alison Luckman (Hailey, ID) – Trustee

Alison is a homemaker, living in Hailey, Idaho. She was born, raised, and lived in Los Angeles until her early forties. While in Los Angeles, she was chairman of the Bel Air Garden Club and participated in a myriad of charitable organizations. Since being in Idaho, she has served on the board of the Sun Valley Music Festival and maintains an interest in several local philanthropies. Her hobbies include hiking the local mountains and maintaining her home landscape and vegetable gardens.

“Answering why it is important to save plants is beyond my scope of words.  I believe that saving our plants is ultimately the most important thing that we can do.  It saves our air, it saves our animals, it saves our lives.  If there is any way that I can be involved in maintaining our plant diversity, I will consider it to be my most important contribution to future generations.  I am very grateful to have been selected to serve on this board.” – Alison Luckman

Nancy Ylvisaker (St. Louis, MO) – Trustee

Nancy worked in finance in NYC for 17 years, first at JP Morgan as an investment banker and then President of its Community Development Corporation (CDC), and then at Merrill Lynch as the head of its CDC. Moving home to St. Louis in 2001, she served as President of historic Bellefontaine Cemetery & Arboretum, a Level II arboretum, and public educator on the NRHP. She also headed Bellefontaine’s community development affiliate. Nancy is the board chair for The Nature Conservancy in Missouri, and on other boards including the Danforth Plant Science Center Leadership Council, the Harris World Ecology Center, Missouri Botanical Garden Conservation Mission Council and the Garden Club of America Finance Committee. She has a BA in Philosophy from Brown and an MBA from Yale.

Applied Plant Conservation Course

Development is currently underway for the creation of a brand-new, online Applied Plant Conservation course that will train our current and future botanical workforce in the best practices of rare plant stewardship and conservation. Partial funding for course modules has been generously provided by the Bureau of Land Management Offices of California, Colorado, and Nevada. The result will be a dynamic, video-based course featured on the Rare Plant Academy covering topics ranging from rare plant genetics and reintroductions to seed collections, exceptional species, and much more. CPC National Office staff are pleased to be collaborating with partners throughout our network to develop and teach course content.

RIN Seed Longevity Study

This year marked the launch of CPC’s nationwide research project evaluating the longevity of rare and endangered plant species seeds in conservation seed banks. The CPC National Office awarded seed collections funding to 23 Participating Institutions who recollect seed from 115 populations of rare plants held in long term storage for 15 years or more. Our collaborators at the National Laboratory for Genetic Resources Preservation will evaluate how the viability of these seeds has declined over time, using both traditional measure (germination) and a new biophysical proxy of seed health, RNA integrity.

Florida Plant Rescue

CPC has launched the Florida Plant Rescue (FLPR), a statewide seed collection initiative which aims to secure the rare and endangered plant species of the Sunshine State in conservation collections. Stakeholders from Florida’s existing botanical community, including eight Participating Institutions, held their first meeting in January 2021 to discuss collections and advancement strategy for this fledgling initiative. Thanks to support from two generous donors, CPC funded four Participating Institutions to make 10 inaugural seed collections. The National Office worked with regional experts in rare plant assessments, Institute for Regional Conservation, and Florida Natural Areas Inventory to improve our understanding of the priority species most in need of safeguarding.

Recently, CPC secured an additional year of funding for FLPR through a $100,000 grant from the Band Foundation. This funding will enable an additional 20 seed collections and provide support for a part-time project coordinator. In addition we will be able to fund one project that involves an exceptional endangered species and build the database for the program.

Wrapping Up the Rare Plant Academy Grant

CPC is entering the final year of our Institute for Museum and Library Services National Leadership Grant in support of the Rare Plant Academy (RPA). Over the past three years, this grant funding has enabled us to develop the RPA into a robust digital hub of learning, sharing, and discovery for the plant conservation community. To date in 2021, we have served over 20,000 web users (an 80% increase over the same period in 2020), updated and improved our Best Practice Guidelines with a new chapter in Conservation Horticulture, and sparked 125 community forum discussions. Over the next year, we will continue to refine our online platform and add to our growing library of plant conservation “how to” videos as we wrap up our grant work—but the work doesn’t stop there! You can always count on RPA being your go-to resource for plant conservation best practices. Just as technologies, resources, and research continue to grow, so too will the RPA as we further our mission to Save Plants from extinction.

Save the Date: CPC 2022 National Meeting

Mark your calendars for the CPC 2022 National Meeting next spring! Our first in-person meeting in two years will take place May 5-6 at the Denver Botanic Gardens, with a special field trip to the National Laboratory for Genetic Resource Preservation (NLGRP) planned for May 4. With the theme of “Celebrating Conservation Milestones,” we look forward to bringing together our plant conservation community to collaborate, share, and learn from each other at this event. Look for more details coming soon on our website!

When did you first fall in love with plants?

If my life were a romantic comedy, plants would be the best friend that I didn’t realize I was in love with the whole time. I grew up associating plants with play time: tea parties under backyard junipers, pretending the berries were treats; playing house in a ring of creosote bushes in the desert lot next door; and family getaways and birthday parties in the forests of the Sierra Nevada range.

In high school and college, I was drawn to ecology and how different species related to each other and their environment. I learned that the scent of the creosotes I played with was from the resin in their leaves that protected them from water loss, and that they grew clonally, allowing the same genetic individual to stay alive for tens of thousands of years! I appreciated and enjoyed learning about plants, and I took a lot of plant-focused classes, but I didn’t recognize plants as my path.

As I started working short-term jobs and seasonal positions in ecology, I saw up close – not just intellectually – that plants were the foundation of all the fascinating living systems I was working in. Seeing how plants grow from tiny seeds to giant trees, defend themselves, adapt to harsh environments, and more, was awe-inspiring. These jobs made me realize that I had spent a lot of time and been happiest with plants, that I had been falling in love with plants my whole life.

What was your path to becoming a Conservation Program Manager at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance?

I’ve always enjoyed looking at how things connect and was drawn to ecology. My degrees are in Earth Systems, an interdisciplinary major at Stanford University, which takes a big picture approach to environmental problem solving. I also minored in Anthropological Sciences with a focus on human relationships with the environment.

Upon graduating, I only had vague ideas about what I wanted to do. I took on some short-term positions: a grasslands project in northern California, a forest resiliency project in Oregon through the Nature Conservancy and AmeriCorps, and a long-term forest recruitment study in Puerto Rico.

These seemingly disparate experiences demonstrated adaptability and happened to align very well with the projects in the fledgling plant research group at what is now the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance— and so I was hired! My responsibilities grew with my time in the group, as I worked my way up from Research Technician to a Program Manager.

How would you describe your role as Coordinator of California Plant Rescue?

The title is very apt – I coordinate the meetings and action items of CaPR. When initially formed, the group would meet and share ideas, but follow-through was difficult as no one had time dedicated in their positions to take on many of the tasks. About 20% of my time goes towards CaPR coordination, and I’m able to bring together task groups, draft reports and grant proposals, and work with partners on data and other projects. California Plant Rescue has 12 members, and even though my employer (SDZWA) is one of them, I always try to keep in mind that I am coordinator for CaPR as a whole and not serving SDZWA while working in this capacity. SDZWA has its own representative at the table.

What progress has CaPR made?

With the recent injection of funding from the state of California, CaPR members have made an astonishing number of seed collections in the past few years. As a result, we now have seed collections of 75% of the rare and threatened plants in the state. But this was possible because of the less showy, and less measurable, work that came before the funding arrived.

Establishing a shared database has been key. Getting all data in the same format took effort from everyone. CPC’s Katie Heineman was instrumental in creating a database platform that any partner could use to see our cumulative rare plant collection progress as well as gaps in our collecting. Having all of the data together enables us to assess the strength of our collections (the number of occurrences represented, the amount of seed in a collection, whether it was done by maternal lines or bulked) and identify opportunities.

In general, why do you support work to Save Plants?

Plants are amazing! Because they can’t change location and aren’t human-like, people often fail to see how dynamic and exciting they are. Yet, when people picture a habitat or ecosystem, they often picture the plant community of that habitat, perhaps intuitively knowing that plants are the foundation of life. I work to save plants broadly because they are key to life on this planet.

Most plant species are still mysteries to us: we don’t know their role in ecosystems, potential utility, or evolutionary potential. But we don’t need those details to know that each type of plant is unique. I work to save rare plants because plants are special in their own right and shouldn’t be allowed to blink out because of human activity.

What new approaches or initiatives in conservation excite you?

The conservation community is getting more specific, and more experimental, about how to conserve biodiversity in the face of climate change. Initial research efforts were focused on understanding the impact of climate change (super important!), while conservation actions often focused on addressing other threats to help reduce the total number of stressors the species faced and on collecting seed as backup. Now it seems that more people are finding ways to address the threat. For example, some exciting new approaches include incorporating knowledge of climate resiliency into land conservation, careful assisted migration, and looking for adaptive traits in a population to enhance plantings.