Save Plants

• Growing the number of rare plant species in the National Collection with 180 new species added in 2021, raising the total number of species in the Collection to 2,208. Many of these new accessions were the result of the California Plant Rescue.
• Introducing the Florida Plant Rescue – a statewide seed collections and resiliency initiative that aims to secure and safeguard all remaining Florida rare plant species in conservation collections to prevent their extinction. To date, partners have made 8 collections of species that have never been previously seed banked and are set to make 18 more collections in the 2022 growing season.
• Collaborating with 13 PIs (and counting!) on the development of the online Applied Plant Conservation course. To date, 56 hours of content on topics such as rare plant genetics, conservation of exceptional species, seed collections, and more are under development.
• Launching new Individual Conservation Partner categories for Students, Emerging Professionals, and Plant Conservation Professionals, with the goal to broaden and grow our network in support of our shared mission to Save Plants.
• Reinvigorating the Plant Sponsorship program to support rare species in the National Collection and the teams working to conserve them.

In addition to sharing program updates, we welcomed CPC’s newest team member, Office Manager Krysta Nunn, and three new Institutional Conservation Partners to the CPC network: Institute for Regional Conservation, Southeastern Grasslands Initiative, and United Plant Savers.

The 2022 National Meeting served as a welcome opportunity to share conservation milestones and connect with fellow plant conservation practitioners and partners – both in person and virtually – to exchange ideas and learn from each other in our shared mission to Save Plants from extinction.

Congratulations on being awarded the CPC Star Award! Are there any remarks you’d like to share in response to receiving this reward?

I was certainly surprised to win the Star Award; I don’t even have a doctorate! I’m grateful to CPC for the recognition. It is especially meaningful to me to be in the company of other Star Award winners, many of whom I have admired for years.

What has it meant to you to be a member of the CPC network? How has CPC supported your work?

I think it all boils down to three things.  First, CPC is a guiding voice for our on-the-ground conservation work, setting the standards for the work we do, based on the excellent science coming out of NLGRP, MoBot, CREW, and other institutions.  Second, CPC has been a reliable and much-appreciated source of financial support, paying us to do the kind of work that we want to be doing anyway (Seed collecting! Outreach!) without mountains of red tape, for which we are so grateful.  And third, CPC is moral support.  Many of us are housed within institutions where conservation is not part of the mission statement, yet through CPC we are part of this amazing network that understands our needs and works to make our jobs easier.  We love you guys!

Read more about Jennifer and her work to Save Plants in her Conservation Champion feature.

National Meeting Photo Contest

Incredible snapshots of rare plants, teams in the field, and beautiful habitats took center stage at the 3rd Annual National Meeting Photo Contest. Entries were received from across the CPC network. Joe DeWolf (Conservation Specialist, San Diego Botanic Garden) took first place with a stunning close-up image of Ocotillo (Fouquieria splendens) pushing new growth in the Anza Borrego Desert.

Second place was awarded to Meg Engelhardt (Seed Bank Manager, Missouri Botanical Garden) for a photo that features Meg getting a close-up look at the very tiny federally endangered Geocarpon minimum.

Third place went to Rachel Sadowski (Conservation Specialist II, San Diego Botanic Garden) for her image of Clematis lasiantha climbing through a steep canyon in San Diego County’s Otay Mountain Wilderness.

Congratulations to our Photo Contest winners, and thank you to everyone who participated!

The CPC Reintroduction Registry, newly re-launched on SavePlants.org ahead of our National Meeting in May 2022, makes it easier to find invaluable records and contacts for reintroduction projects. The registry—a concise list of rare plant reintroduction projects—is sortable by species, lead institution, or state, and it provides links to relevant peer-reviewed and non-reviewed “grey” literature. This is the first step in revitalizing an important older network resource: CPC’s International Reintroduction Registry (IRR), created in 2009 by Dr. Ed Guerrant, formerly of Rae Selling Berry Seed Bank and Botanic Garden, and Dr. Joyce Maschinski, President & CEO of CPC. The new registry also contains information from willing contributors to the REDCap Reintroduction Database for US Rare Plants, compiled by Matthew Albrecht and collaborators at Missouri Botanical Garden. Our goal is to make the full database records from these assets available online by the end of 2022, including detailed assessments of reintroduction design, treatments, and outcomes. To protect rare plant location information and project details, data access will be restricted to individual database contributors and CPC National Office Staff.

The need for this registry was identified through strategic planning for the future of CPC’s reintroduction database, initiated in 2021. CPC contracted postdoctoral research fellow Dr. Joe Bellis, a recent graduate of Liverpool John Moores University, to evaluate the assets of the CPC IRR and the REDCap database and to chart a future for these assets within our network. This process identified the need for a new product that incorporates both databases and includes data fields designed for collaborative research. This will helps researchers to identify and extract data to improve the CPC Best Practice Guidelines on Reintroduction & Translocation.

Watch Joe’s presentation from the 2022 CPC National Meeting to learn more about the history of the registry and Joe’s plans for a meta-analysis evaluating effects of climate on rare plant translocation outcomes. If you would like to share records for the registry or meta-analysis, please contact Dr. Joe Bellis at jbellis@saveplants.org.

Visiting the Vault

At our 2022 National Meeting, Conservation Officers from the CPC network and the CPC Board of Trustees had an exceptional opportunity to visit NLGRP’s one-of-a-kind science and germplasm preservation facilities. The tour included a brief but exciting dip into the -18 C constant-temperature environment of the USDA seed vault—an enormous walk-in freezer housing millions of agricultural seeds from all over the world. NLGRP staff led breakout groups with the conservation officers to discuss specific topics, including preservation of clonal tissues, RNA integrity extraction, liquid nitrogen handling, storage of fern spores and exceptional seeds, and dormancy-breaking techniques for germination trials. Many of our network members were thrilled to see for the first time the destination of the conservation seed collections they so carefully prepare and send for safety duplication.

Early Results

During the CPC National Meeting session at Denver Botanic Gardens, Dr. Chris Walters shared her early interpretation of the preliminary RIN project data. Comparing germination rates of freshly collected seed versus long-term frozen seed, she found substantial variation in the loss of germination following freezing—indicating that wild rare species vary widely in their innate ability to survive in seed storage. Dr. Walters identified three interesting types of storage behaviors in the study species. In species with long-lived seeds, the germination of newly collected seeds is roughly equivalent to those stored for 15 years or more in frozen collection. Other species have short-lived seeds that lose more than half of their germination-based viability while in storage. In the third group of species, seeds with dormancy loss demonstrate higher germination rates following long-term freezing compared to freshly collected seeds—perhaps because dormancy has been reduced in frozen storage. In her initial evaluation of the new RIN metric of seed health, Dr. Walters reported that freshly collected seed had high RNA integrity regardless of germination rate. This result indicates that collectors are sending high-quality seeds. It also highlights the difficulty in comparing germination across species with vastly different dormancy types. In the preliminary data, RIN was lower on average in long-term frozen seed than in freshly collected seed, but robust analysis of this metric will require RNA extraction and testing from more species for both newly collected and long-term stored seeds.

More Work to Do!

While continuing to measure RNA integrity and germination in the study species, Dr. Walters and her team at NLGRP will also begin “simulated aging” experiments—evaluating RIN and germination in a subset of species at numerous time points and elevated temperatures. This summer, Dr. Katie Heineman from the CPC National Office will follow up with conservation officers to learn about their collection plans and retrieve any additional study species’ germination records that may inform germination testing strategies at NLGRP. CPC Summer Fellow Eduardo Charvel will compile a comprehensive set of life history traits for use in a predictive computer model, which will evaluate whether particular traits can predict declines in germination rate and RIN estimates of seed health for wild rare plant species. Eduardo is hoping to report back on his project at the end of the summer, so stay tuned!

As Seen on CPC’s Rare Plant Academy: Community Feedback Survey

The Center for Plant Conservation’s Rare Plant Academy (RPA) is a hub of learning, sharing, and discovery for the plant conservation community. The RPA serves as a training ground for the next generation of plant conservation scientists, who will be the first line of defense against plant extinction.

This community survey asks about your experience using several RPA resources, including the CPC Best Practices for Species Survival in the Wild, the Video Library, and posting tools such as the community forum.

Your feedback is important to us. A few minutes of your time will help us improve the Rare Plant Academy, to better serve our community working to Save Plants!

Take the survey!