Here in Britain, we have a wonderful diversity of native and introduced trees. And we have emerging diseases which threaten our trees, including the dreaded ash dieback. So of course, we have a National Tree Seed Bank to conserve tree diversity… er, no. We don’t. I’ve just learned that we don’t, from my fellow blogger Spencer Woodard at anthropogen. Hard to believe, isn’t it?
Now Mark Kinver at the BBC tells us that there’s to be a new tree seedbank at Kew Gardens. I so hope this isn’t too late.
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About argylesock
I wrote a PhD about veterinary parasitology so that's the starting point for this blog. But I'm now branching out into other areas of biology and into popular science writing. I'll write here about science that happens in landscapes, particularly farmland, and about science involving interspecific interactions. Datasets and statistics get my attention. Exactly where this blog will lead? That's a journey that I'm on and I hope you'll come with me.
I could have sworn there was already a seed bank, the like of which David Attenborough referred to in one of his programs a few years back. I guess that is the Millennium Seed Bank project to which Mark Kinver speaks about. Whatever, as you say, this is much needed.
Thanks Tony, you appear to be right. Here’s the Kew article (published two days ago) about starting to include tree seeds in their Seed Bank http://www.kew.org/news/tree-seeds.htm
Good stuff. Thanks for the link.
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