Keeper of the Collection By: Christina Varnava, Living Collections Curator
H
ello Ironwood Readers. I’m your new Living Collections Curator, Christina Varnava. As a recent graduate of the California Botanic Garden in Claremont, I completed a floristic study of the plants found in the upper Sespe Creek watershed in the Los Padres National Forest, a botanically diverse area. I’m eager to continue to deepen my knowledge of the plants of California by taking on the exciting role of curating the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden’s Living Collection. Some readers of Ironwood will be familiar with the concept of the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden (SBBG) as a Living Collection, but for those who are less familiar, I’ll offer some detail about what that means. The Garden is so much more than a beautiful place. Like books in a library or art in a museum, many of the plants in our garden are accessioned material. This means they have a unique number linking them to an accession record. These records include detailed information about where each plant came from, who collected it, and when it was acquired. After nearly a century, we have thousands of accessioned living plants, as well as hundreds of seed packets in our seed bank. Our most valuable accessions are collected from plants in the wild, usually in the form of cuttings or seeds. We also have many rare cultivars of California native plants that have been created by SBBG or other institutions such as Theodore Payne, UC Davis, and California Botanic Garden. Like the other t ypes of collections I mentioned, the Living Collection serves many functions. As a research tool, the collection is used to study genetics, biology, ecology (e.g. pollination and seed dispersal), anatomy, and much more. As a conservation tool, it serves as a means to preserve biodiversit y. Species that are threatened in the wild by climate change, development, or poaching can be protected in a garden setting like ours. Finally, each plant in The Garden is an ambassador that represents California’s rich biodiversit y. Many people do not have the opportunit y or abilit y to climb a mountain to see plants like the striking Kennedy’s Buckwheat (Eriogonum kennedyi) or see the imperiled Shaw’s agave (Agave shawii var. shawii) blooming in the wild. But here at The Garden, they’re both accessible in a day’s visit. My role as curator is to increase the vitalit y, qualit y, and biodiversit y of our collection. To achieve this, one of my top priorities is to bring the botanical diversit y of SBBG closer to reflecting the botanical diversit y of California, which includes just over 6,500 subspecies and varieties of native plants. Day to day, I work with our Living Collections
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