the-circles-of-life:Fleurydora felicisft. Laura JenningsWith a fifth of plants species across the wo

the-circles-of-life:Fleurydora felicisft. Laura JenningsWith a fifth of plants species across the world today threatened by extinction, the Millenium Seed Bank serves as a backup plan. The project houses at least 38,500 species in their collection, a gargantuan task that involves people all over the world, including Laura Jennings.“Most of the time I work in the Kew herbarium, so I am either at my computer or somewhere in our 5 enormous buildings full of dried plant specimens.”She spends her office hours making sure the seeds in the bank are correctly named. “Maybe once a year or so I get to go in the field and collect seeds myself. I love plant hunting on fieldwork, but it takes a lot of preparation.”Since they may collect as many as 10,000 seeds from one population, the team makes sure the target seeds are ripe and plentiful enough so that they don’t impact the ecosystem.After harvesting, the seeds need to be prepared to meet a certain level of humidity and temperature. “Like dogs, you don’t want to leave them in a hot car.”Tedious as it may sound, she enjoys seeing plants in their natural environment. “I was recently in Guinea and we saw some very rare and beautiful plants. I identified a grass I had collected there back in the herbarium and found out that it was rare, unique to Guinea and had never been banked before, that got my heart racing!”She also got to meet the native plants in unspoiled parts of Guinea, including a yellow flower that grabbed her attention. “Fleurydora felicis is a beautiful shrub endemic to Guinea and only found in those upland forests, which are threatened by bushfires and being cut down for timber, so it could easily disappear.”Saving plants such as the wild relatives of crops gives us a genetic reservoir to help our crops adapt to different environments, improving our food security. But Laura thinks people should accept that plants need to be saved just so they don’t cease to exist, just like animals.While people often see plants as a mere backdrop for animals, it’s clear who Laura’s heart belongs to. “I am squeamish and I get really seasick, so I would have made a terrible zoologist. I like it that my study organisms don’t run away when you find them!”—Laura Jennings is a botanist at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, who works with the Millenium Seed Bank. Get to know Laura and the plants of the world.Twitter · Kew’s seed collection—My main blog · Ko-fi · Patreon -- source link

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