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in Your Garden
safeguarding long-term survival
Environmental threats like urbanization, climate change, invasive species, and pollution have caused many plants to become rare or endangered. By banking seeds of these plants in safe storage, away from danger, the Chicago Botanic Garden is working to safeguard their long-term survival. Also known as ex-situ (offsite) conservation, seed banking native species guards against their disappearance in the wild and is an important way to conserve plant diversity.
Climate change occurred naturally over millennia, with most organisms either adapting or migrating in the face of such environmental change. Today, however, changes are occurring very rapidly and many species may not be able to adapt. Moreover, human development, and the corresponding loss of natural ecosystems, has blocked traditional migration pathways used by plants in response to climate change.
The Garden’s Dixon National Tallgrass Prairie Seed Bank houses seeds from native plants throughout the Midwest and Great Plains regions, with the goal of banking at least 10,000 seeds from 1,500 native species we have identified. Most of our seeds are banked here at the Garden, but a part of every collection is sent to other seed banks such as the international Millennium Seed Bank at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, England, and to the National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation in Fort Collins, Colorado, as backup.
In an effort to extend our seed-banking impact, the Chicago Botanic Garden is working with local urban farmers trained to propagate native plant species and harvest and bank the seeds. In fact, banking seeds at home is quite easy — whether your motivation is to help preserve imperiled native species or simply to prolong the life of store-bought or garden-harvested seeds for future use. Read on for some tips to get you started.
Steps to Saving Seeds at Home
At-a-Glance Glossary of Terms
Orthodox seeds: seeds that can be dried to low levels of humidity and frozen for long-term storage. Eighty percent of the plant species worldwide have orthodox seeds. Examples of orthodox crop plants: peas, corn, tomatoes. Examples of orthodox native grasses/plants: Little bluestem, big bluestem, purple coneflower, prairie dock.
Recalcitrant seeds: seeds that because of their physiological make (e.g., high food reserve, high oil content) are not conducive to dormancy. Local examples of recalcitrant seeds are oaks, walnuts, and maples—they germinate immediately with no dormancy. Many tropical rainforest plants also are recalcitrant, never going into true dormancy.
Open-pollinated plants: plants pollinated by wind, birds, and insects as opposed to self-pollinated plants or plants with controlled pollination (hybrids). Open-pollinated varieties mutate and adapt to local fluctuations. Generally, they are hardier than their hybrid counterparts and exhibit enhanced genetic diversity.