THREATENED LINNAEUS TWINFLOWER SEEDS DEPOSITED
IN KEW 'S MILLENNIUM SEED BANK
Kew 's Millennium Seed Bank, the largest seed bank in the world dedicated to the conservation of endangered wild plant species, is safeguarding the seeds of Linnaea borealis (Twinflower), named after eminent Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. The distribution of this species in the UK is restricted to pine woodland in Scotland and has declined considerably owing to habitat loss and fragmentation of its populations. Climate change is expected to have adverse impacts on its habitat in the future. Consequently, Twinflower is a priority species listed for action under the UK Biodiversity Action Plan, with Plantlife International, the wild plant conservation charity, acting as Lead Partner in efforts to secure its conservation.
The Millennium Seed Bank, managed by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew , has already saved seed from 96 per cent of the UK 's wild flora. With 68 species still to collect, including Linnaea borealis , it has been working in partnership with Plantlife to locate the flower and harvest seed for conservation in its underground vaults in West Sussex .
Simon Linington, head of curation at the Millennium Seed Bank, commented: “We are delighted to receive this collection of Twinflower seed from Plantlife which will be kept in our freezer for use in the future, as and when required. It is especially gratifying that the collection should have been made this year, the 300th anniversary of the birth of Carl Linnaeus, whose name has become synonymous with botanical classification.”
Previously recorded from old pine plantings in northern England, Twinflower is now extinct in this area. Today, it is entirely confined to Scotland, found in about 50 locations from Caithness to the Borders with a concentration around the Cairngorms. Local volunteers, working with Plantlife, harvested Twinflower from two sites in Scotland for deposit in the Millennium Seed Bank. Plantlife works to conserve wild plants in their native habitats through practical conservation action and habitat restoration, and recognises that seed banks are a necessary fall-back in case of extinctions in the wild.
There are a number of factors causing loss or decline of Linnaea borealis. As the species grows primarily on podsolic soils, it is usually found in native pine woodlands, a habitat listed as a priority by the EU Habitats Directive 1992. Severe losses of twinflower occurred in the early twentieth century, with the clearance of native pine woodland. Since then populations have become fragmented and isolated, with modern timber management techniques that can be inappropriate for pinewood herb conservation. Twinflower is a creeping, woody perennial that is shallow-rooting and susceptible to drought, which makes it particularly vulnerable should climate change cause temperatures to increase. Another key factor is that the plant mainly reproduces vegetatively in Scotland and in recent years has produced only small amounts of seeds in isolated populations that do not facilitate cross-pollination.
“The survival of Linnaea borealis in the UK is under considerable threat,” said Dr. Deborah Long, Conservation Officer for Plantlife Scotland. “Plantlife's aim is to achieve self-sustaining populations of the species at all existing sites and ensure these populations are capable of sexual reproduction. We are conducting management trials and giving advice on how to manage Twinflower populations so that they can survive and thrive into the long term. However, depositing seed in The Millennium Seed Bank is an insurance policy that the species will never become extinct and we will work with Kew to add to the seed collection over the coming years in order to increase both the quantity and the genetic diversity.”
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Information and Images
Sharon Buckley
PR Manager, Millennium Seed Bank
RBG Kew at Wakehurst Place
01444 894018
s.buckley@kew.org
Sue Nottingham
Press Officer, Plantlife International
01722 342739
sue.nottingham@plantlife.org.uk
Deborah Long
Conservation Officer, Plantlife Scotland
01786 478509
Deborah.long@plantlife.org.uk
Notes to Editors
The Millennium Seed Bank is the largest wild plant seed bank in the world, owned and managed by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and located at Wakehurst Place, RBG Kew's site in West Sussex . The Millennium Seed Bank Project is one of the most ambitious conservation projects in the world. Conceived after the first Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, the Millennium Seed Bank Project was based on the three central tenets of the Convention on Biological Diversity: conservation, sustainable use and equitable sharing of benefits. By 2010, RBG Kew and its partners will have collected and conserved seed from 10% of the world's wild flowering plant species (c.30, 000 species). The Millennium Seed Bank has the capacity to store up to half the world's wild flowering plant species and already holds 96% of the UK 's flora. Species for collection and conservation are prioritised by Kew 's partners, all are endangered, rare and of potential economic value. The Millennium Seed Bank Project has been made possible with generous funding from the Millennium Commission, the Wellcome Trust and Orange plc and other donors. The Millennium Seed Bank has no secured funding beyond 2010. For further information, visit www.kew.org/msbp
Plantlife International is the only charity in the UK working solely to protect wild plants and fungi, and the habitats in which they are found. Plantlife does this by carrying out practical conservation work at hundreds of mostly unprotected sites across the UK through its ‘Back from the Brink' conservation programme, managing 4,500 acres of rare and important plant habitat as nature reserves, influencing key national policies and legislation relevant to plant conservation, involving members and non-members in many aspects of its work, collaborating widely to promote wild plant conservation, and commissioning key research and publishing reports. The wild flowers and plants that give the UK its unique character, from woodland and meadows to uplands and coastline, are under tremendous pressure from intensive farming, habitat destruction, invasive plants from overseas, inappropriate grazing, climate change and pollution. A third of all plants worldwide are under threat and one in five of Britain 's wild plants is threatened with extinction. Preserving wild plants in botanical gardens or in seed banks is an important last resort.
Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish scientist renowned for introducing the binomial system in the naming of biological organisms, was born in 1707. For further information, visit www.linnean.org or www.linnaeus2007.se