Millennium Seed Bank parterres

Outside the entrance to the Wellcome Trust Millennium Building are eight raised beds planted to represent different threatened habitats.

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Millennium Seed Bank parterres

Millennium Seed Bank parterres

Did you know?

  • The UK has some 4,000 hectares of shingle around its coasts but this habitat is threatened from coastal developments for housing and tourism, plus the extraction of pebbles for building.
  • Chalk downland can have as many as 30 different species per square metre.
  • The hanging meadow in the Loder Valley Reserve at Wakehurst Place is cut once a year according to traditional methods. Over the past century, the area of meadow managed using traditional methods in the UK has dropped by 97%.

Four of these threatened habitats exist between the south coast and Wakehurst Place, and four occur in other parts of the UK. The former are: shingle beach, cliff face, chalk downland and meadow. The latter are: marsh & fenland, hills & mountains, heathland and cornfield. These represent a selection of the 1,400 native seed-bearing plants of the UK, of which almost all now have seeds stored in the Millennium Seed Bank (MSB).

Visitors can see a range of mini-habitats and learn about the plant collections that define them. Plants that inhabit shingle beaches, for example, live a precarious existence amid shifting ridges of pebbles regularly inundated with salt water. They tend to be annuals such as the sea kale (Crambe maritima) and sea pea (Lathyrus japonicus). Those that live in wet meadows, such as the water mint (Mentha aquatica) can tolerate complete immersion. Just inside the entrance to the MSB is another raised bed containing a selection of plants from arid locations around the world. These represent the MSB’s work collecting and banking seeds from the world’s drylands.

Things to look out for

In the raised bed representing a mountain top, you can see mountain avens (Dryas octopetala), which is a relic remaining from the ice age and usually only grows in the north and west of the country. A member of the rose family, it hugs the ground and has small creamy white flowers with yellow centres. Plants on display in the global drylands parterre include the viciously spiked cactus Echinocereus engelmannii from California.

Kids’ mission

Find the answers to the following questions:

  • Why is a shingle beach an difficult for plants to live?
  • Can you name three types of plants that grow on cliffs?


 

1 comment on 'Millennium Seed Bank parterres'

Eva Vines says

27/10/2009 12:00:00 AM | Report abuse

i have germinated some corn cockle seeds from a solitary plant growing at the bottom of a wall in rockwell end bucks.it was 2 years ago and i picked a seed pod.cos i am 53 and never seen a plant quite like it.said plant subsequently weeded out! is anyone interested in these plants?

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Your Kew

We invite photographers to capture the sights at Kew and Wakehurst. These images are a selection of images submitted by photographers from around the world. We hope you enjoy them. You can see more on Flickr.

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Fact Box


Hagenia abyssinica (hagenia)

Hagenia abyssinica
hagenia

An infusion of the female flowers of hagenia is used in Africa as a treatment for tapeworms.

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