7 minute read
Working in Service of Plants: Protecting California’s Rare Flora
By Heather Schneider, Ph.D., Senior Rare Plant Conservation Scientist
What does it take to save plants? It’s a simple question with a complex answer that gets to the heart of our work at Santa Barbara Botanic Garden. To understand, protect, and restore native plants, we need to get to know them in their natural habitat, observe them throughout their life cycle, and assess current and potential threats to their persistence.
This is a big job for many reasons, not the least of which is that California is a global biodiversity hot spot boasting more than 6,600 kinds of native plants — and more than 35% of those are rare. To break that down even further, 1,360 of those rare plants grow only in California and nowhere else!
At the Garden, we understand the importance of protecting California’s extraordinary islands, foggy coasts, verdant grasslands, evergreen shrublands, mighty redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens), diverse deserts, and towering mountain ranges. Saving plants means learning about these diverse communities and the threats that they face so that we can help them thrive into the future.
In Search of California’s Rare Plants
In 2024, the Garden’s rare plant team planned for months, hiked hundreds of miles, and slept outside for 200 cumulative nights in California’s wild places. These research trips are extremely valuable scientifically, but it can also feel like California is our treasure map and we are on the hunt! We traveled to find plants on the Channel Islands, in coastal California, in the central valley, and on both sides of the Sierra Nevada. We used a combination of field survey and mapping techniques to locate and evaluate plant populations in nature. Plants are easier to find and identify when they are flowering, so that was when we typically conducted our first field visits. We recorded data about plant abundance, habitat quality, floral visitors, and threats from things like invasive species and human activity. We also collected herbarium specimens, documenting a particular plant at a specific place and time. With this information, we estimated when seed would be ready to collect and planned our return later in the season. If we collect too early, then we risk collecting seed that may never germinate, but if we arrive too late, then there may not be much left to collect.
Given that most plants start out as seeds (except for spore-producing plants like mosses and ferns), you can see why they are essential to our ability to understand, protect, and restore wild plant communities. Studying what makes seeds germinate helps us grow plants in our Living Collection Nursery and tells us something about the natural conditions to which they are adapted and how they might fare in the future. For example, seeds that require exposure to cold to germinate may be affected by climate change that leads to warmer minimum temperatures. Once we know how to germinate specific seeds, then we can grow plants in our Living Collection Nursery and conduct pollinations to generate more seed (a process called seed bulking) for restoration.
Preserving the Rare Seeds of California
Following months of field, nursery, and lab work to collect, clean, and curate tens of thousands of rare plant seeds, these precious gems are packaged and frozen in the Garden’s Conservation Seed Bank. Seed banking is a relatively efficient way to safeguard plant diversity over the long term. Our Conservation Seed Bank houses more than 3.7 million seeds (and growing!) from across California. It’s our insurance policy against extinction, currently protecting more than 400 different kinds of rare plants. These seeds represent a genetic backup of wild populations and can be used to restore those populations in the aftermath of catastrophe. They can also be used in research and recovery work at the Garden and in nature.
Each year, the rare plant team gets to bask in the wonder of the natural world while also grappling with how to best protect it. In 2024, we surveyed 145 rare plant populations and 70 populations of common native plants, and we brought 111 new collections into the Garden’s Conservation Seed Bank. We studied plant life cycles, quantified soil seed banks (i.e., seeds lying dormant in the ground), produced nearly 500,000 seeds for restoration in our Living Collection Nursery, discovered previously undocumented populations, and described a plant new to Western science.
It is our honor to work in the service of plants. Our time spent analyzing data, assessing threats, and developing conservation recommendations for state and federal agencies is important for the survival of natural habitats. However, the Garden alone can’t save California’s native plants — we need everyone to get involved! That’s why we share our findings with the public via social media, in newspaper and radio interviews, and at public lectures. You can share with us too — and the entire plant community — via iNaturalist.org. With your collaboration and the Garden’s impactful work at the state and national level, we can ensure that our scientific findings are put to the best use possible.
Journey With Us Into the Field
Ever wonder what it takes to protect some of California’s rarest plants and habitats? In the articles, "Dudleya Deluge," "Researching the Endangered Jewels of Carrizo," "Plants on the Brink: Island Relics and Everyday Magic," and "Molok Luyuk," you'll find both insight and inspiration as you hear directly from our team. We hope this energizes you to engage with nature and join us in the fight to save native plants — one seed and one step at a time.
Good news! In 2023, six rare plants from the Channel Islands were removed from the federal endangered species list thanks to conservation and recovery successes. As we celebrate these wins, we also need to continue investing in conservation. Help us speak for plants because they can’t speak for themselves.
Cover Photo: A curious adult and juvenile Channel Islands fox (Urocyon littoralis ssp. santarosae) observed on Santa Rosa Island. (Photo: Heather Schneider, Ph.D.)
