2025 CPC National Meeting
CPC at Missouri Botanical Garden
May 7-10, 2025
The Center for Plant Conservation is thrilled to host its 2025 National Meeting May 7-10, at Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, Missouri. This annual event unites plant conservation professionals, researchers, and advocates to exchange insights, share experiences, and build strategies for advancing rare and endangered plant stewardship.
This year’s theme, Best Practices: Proven Methods & New Perspectives in Rare Plant Conservation, highlights the tried-and-true methodologies and emerging approaches that drive successful conservation efforts. Together, we’ll explore the latest strategies in plant conservation and stewardship, delve into innovative techniques and evolving best practices, and discuss collaborative solutions to address the growing challenges—as well as promising solutions and opportunities—impacting imperiled plants and their ecosystems.
The conference program will feature updates from the CPC National Office on network-wide initiatives, dynamic lightning talks from CPC’s network of Conservation Partners, and presentations centered on both well-established best practices and innovative perspectives in plant conservation. We invite Institutional and Individual Conservation Partners to submit presentation abstracts that align with this year’s theme, Best Practices: Proven Methods & New Perspectives in Rare Plant Conservation, focusing on successful applications of proven strategies, creative solutions to complex challenges, lessons learned from the field, or topics that otherwise adhere to the conference theme.
Conference-goers will also have to opportunity to join a pre-conference workshop hosted by the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Center for Conservation and Sustainable Development and Horticulture Division team on Wednesday, May 7, as well as a post-conference field trip on Saturday, May 10, to Shaw Nature Reserve, Missouri Botanical Garden’s 2,441-acre educational, research, and habitat restoration and reconstruction site. Space for both the workshop and field trip are limited and on a first come, first served basis.
Join us in St. Louis to celebrate the ingenuity, dedication, and partnerships that empower plant conservation efforts and ensure the survival of the world’s rarest plants for generations to come.
___________________________________________________
Pre-Conference Workshop: Wednesday, May 7
Ex situ collections in botanical gardens aim to safeguard imperiled plant species by preserving existing intraspecific variation for future conservation and restoration. However, general guidelines for ex situ plant conservation, when applied in the absence of genetic or genomic information, will perform well in some cases and poorly in others. In 2022, the Missouri Botanical Garden was awarded a National Leadership grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) for a project that aims to develop a model that botanical gardens may broadly adopt to understand and more efficiently conserve multiple forms of intraspecific variation in ex situ living collections. Taking advantage of the increasing availability of genomic data and the ability of botanical gardens to manage living collections as common garden experiments, this model aims to assess neutral and adaptive intraspecific variation in imperiled plant species.
As part of this project, members of the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Center for Conservation and Sustainable Development and Horticulture Division will lead a training workshop intended for those who manage and utilize ex situ collections in plant conservation. The goal of the workshop is to share protocols that can be readily adopted by many botanical gardens to advance their ex situ conservation programs, combining genomic data and common garden experiments. The half-day workshop will consist of short lectures on specific protocols that botanical gardens can follow to assess both neutral and adaptive genomic and phenotypic variation for a species of interest and use the data to design optimized ex situ collections for that plant species. Participants will also learn best practices for tracking maternal lines, propagation, and research in botanical garden collections with Missouri Botanical Garden’s Living Collection Management System (LCMS). The workshop will conclude with a tour of common garden experiments and phenotyping protocols for six imperiled plant species under study at Missouri Botanical Garden’s Oertli Nursery.
Registration fee: $25/person
Detailed schedule coming soon. Please note that registration for the workshop is on a first come, first served basis as space is limited.
Post-conference Field Trip: Saturday, May 10
Join a field trip experience to Shaw Nature Reserve, the Missouri Botanical Garden’s 2,441-acre educational, research, and habitat restoration and reconstruction site. Field trip attendees will Missouri Botanical Garden’s seed bank and ecological restoration facilities, and take a walking tour of restored prairies, woodlands, and glades with scenic views of the Meramec River Valley. Access to these sites will require moderate hiking and walking.
Registration fee: $85/person
Detailed schedule coming soon. Please note that registration for the field trip is on a first come, first served basis as space is limited.
Board of Trustees Meeting
CPC’s Board of Trustees meeting will take place the Wednesday before the CPC National Meeting on May 7, 2025. Board Members will have the opportunity to join the field trip on Saturday May 10, 2025.
2025 National Meeting Sponsor
Important Dates
March 18, 2025
Presentation Abstracts Due & Early Bird Registration Ends
April 18, 2025
Final Day for Registration
May 7-10, 2025
National Meeting Activities Begin
Registration Offerings
In-Person Registration Rates
National Meeting sessions will take place at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Early bird registration is available before March 18, 2025 and costs:
- $425Â for CPC members
- $500Â for Non-members
- $250 for full time students
- Add $25 to each category to register for the pre-conference workshop on Wednesday, May 7
- Add $85 to each category to register for the post-conference field trip on Saturday, May 10
- Late registrations between March 19 – April 18 will add $50 to all categories
National Meeting registration includes:
- Two full days of face-to-face networking with top conservation experts
- Eligibility to present conservation research from your organization  as either a 5-minute lightning talk or poster presentation
- Lunch during conference sessions on May 8-9
- Star Award Dinner on the evening of May 8
- Cocktail reception on May 9
- Transportation from the AC Hotel St. Louis Central West End to/from the conference venue on May 8-9
- Networking with fellow attendees through the Whova conference platform
- Eligibility to compete in the conference photo contest cash prizes
- Access to the Whova conference platform and recorded meeting content beginning two days before and six months after the meeting
Not a CPC Conservation Partner? Become a member to enjoy discounted meeting registration rates and to submit presentation abstracts.
_______________________________________
Requests for registration refunds will be considered at the discretion of the CPC National Office up until April 18, 2025.
Please note that this is an in-person conference with no virtual registration offering.Â
2025 CPC National Meeting
Don't Miss Moments
Pre-conference Workshop
Join the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Center for Conservation and Sustainable Development and Horticulture Division team for a special training workshop intended for those who manage and utilize ex situ collections in plant conservation. The goal of the workshop is to share protocols that can be readily adopted by many botanical gardens to advance their ex situ conservation programs, combining genomic data and common garden experiments. This half-day workshop on Wednesday, May 7, will consist of short lectures on specific protocols that botanical gardens can follow to assess both neutral and adaptive genomic and phenotypic variation for a species of interest and use the data to design optimized ex situ collections for that plant species. Participants will also learn best practices for tracking maternal lines, propagation, and research in botanical garden collections with Missouri Botanical Garden’s Living Collection Management System (LCMS). The workshop will conclude with a tour of common garden experiments and phenotyping protocols for six imperiled plant species under study at Missouri Botanical Garden’s Oertli Nursery.
Registration fee: $25/person
Please note that registration for the workshop is on a first come, first served basis as space is limited.
Field Trip to Shaw Nature Reserve
Join CPC and Missouri Botanical Garden on a visit  to shaw Nature Reserve, the Garden’s 2,441-acre educational, research, and habitat restoration and reconstruction site. Field trip attendees will Missouri Botanical Garden’s seed bank and ecological restoration facilities, and take a walking tour of restored prairies, woodlands, and glades with scenic views of the Meramec River Valley.
Conference attendees will have the option to join this field trip experience following the National Meeting on Saturday, May 10. Access to these sites will require moderate hiking and walking.
Registration fee: $85/person
Please note that registration for the field trip is on a first come, first served basis as space is limited.
Presentations & Networking
Travel and Lodging
Travel Information
St. Louis is served by the St. Louis Lambert International Airport, located approximately 25 minutes from our conference hotel, AC Hotel St. Louis Central West End.
All attendees should make their own arrangements to get to and from the hotel/airport. Shuttles from the hotel to the pre-conference workshop, National Meeting sessions, and post-conference field trip are included in the conference registration.
Hotel Information
CPC has reserved a block of rooms at AC Hotel St. Louis Central West End (215 York Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63108) for the nights of May 6 – 10 (check out Sunday, May 11). The group rate is $189/night, and availability may be limited.
Hotel valet parking is dynamic pricing at $40-$50, based on occupancy. Prices are subject to change without notice. Offsite parking is located at Argyle Garage across the street from hotel.
The deadline to book a hotel room at the group rate is April 15, 2025. Make your reservations online or contact Danielle Ray at danielle.ray@concordhotels.com.
Alternative Accommodations
For those seeking a lower rate, an alternative hotel option is the Courtyard St. Louis Downtown West. Please note that there is no conference room block rate at this hotel and there will be no shuttle transportation provided.
Presentations
BEFORE March 18, 2024, we invite Institutional and Individual Conservation Partners to submit abstracts with their registration form. We are limiting in-person oral presentations to ONE per institution.
Oral Presentations
We invite one representative per CPC Institutional and Individual Conservation Partners to contribute a 5-minute lightning talk about the rare plant conservation initiatives at their institution. We encourage prospective presenters to submit abstract proposals that align with this year’s meeting theme, Best Practices: Proven Methods & New Perspectives in Rare Plant Conservation, highlighting successful applications of proven strategies, creative solutions to complex challenges, lessons learned from the field, or topics that otherwise adhere to the conference theme. Following each 5-minute lightning talk, presenters will have the opportunity to field questions from attendees.
Conference presentations will be recorded and embedded onto the conference platform shortly after each session for all attendees to view. With your permission, CPC will also catalogue these videos through our CPC Rare Plant Academy platform as an educational resource.
We ask that presenters bring their PowerPoint presentations to the conference on a flash drive as well as email presentations to info@saveplants.org the day before their presentation.
Abstracts for in-person presentations are due by March 18, 2025, and can be submitted at the time of registration.
Not a CPC Conservation Partner? Become a member to enjoy discounted meeting registration rates and to submit presentation abstracts.
Poster Presentations
If you would like to highlight the work of multiple members of your institution or multiple projects, you may give one or more poster presentations in addition to an in-person presentation. Posters will be featured in person only, and should be printed a standard size (3 ft x 4 ft) using a material than can be hung with push pins into a conference poster bulletin board.
Poster session will be subject to interest/number of submissions.