Known for its popular garden displays and apple breeding, the University of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum is branching out to protect endangered plants.
The arboretum has joined the Center for Plant Conservation, a national network of botanical institutions and gardens that are trying to conserve rare species in the wild, and to store their seeds in regional deep freezers so they don't become extinct.
David Remucal, the arboretum's newly hired part-time curator of endangered plants, said he hopes to build the program over the next few years. "We want to do right by Minnesota plants," he said.
The effort will monitor rare plants in the wild in conjunction with the Nature Conservancy, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and other groups, he said. And it will study some of the endangered plants that already grow in the arboretum's gardens.
But the greatest impetus for establishing the new program, Remucal said, is to store genetic material of rare Minnesota plants, mainly in a new freezer that keeps seeds at minus 40 degrees.
"For a lot of these plants, there may be only half a dozen populations out there anywhere," Remucal said. "If we have a few random events that happen close together, we could lose all of them."
The concern, he said, is that the sparse clusters of plants could be imperiled by fires, invasive species, excessive deer foraging or other threats. "We'd like to have the genetic material to propagate those populations in case we lose any of them," Remucal said.
Some of the species he'll focus on initially include the Minnesota dwarf trout lily, a dainty plant with a single white flower that occurs only in Minnesota and may become the poster plant for educational efforts. Other rare plants of interest include Western Jacob's ladder and the Western prairie-fringed orchid.
