Missouri Botanical Garden is Embarking on an Effort to Preserve Biodiversity and Plant Knowledge

By Julie Bierach

St. Louis, MO - Every day the Missouri Botanical Garden works to discover and share knowledge about plants and their environment in order to preserve and enrich life. In striving to fulfill that mission, the William L. Brown Center (WLBC) at the Missouri Botanical Garden is embarking on an effort to preserve biodiversity and traditional plant knowledge. The program, Sacred Seeds, is a network of living gardens around the world containing locally important plants, including those of medicinal, ceremonial, food crop, and craft value. The Sacred Seeds program is managed by the WLBC at the Missouri Botanical Garden and is supported by New Chapter Organics and Organic Gardening.

For millennia, medicinal herbs have sustained traditional societies. According to the World Health Organization, 80 percent of the population in developing countries relies on medicinal herbs to meet primary health-care needs. Medicinal herbs have also inspired many pharmaceuticals on which industrial societies rely. Over-harvesting, deforestation and global climate change threaten 70,000 plants known to be medicinal. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) calculates current extinction rates 100 to 1000 times higher than normally occurring in periods of evolutionary stability, which means the planet is in the midst of an unprecedented mass extinction event.

Also endangered are the languages and healing traditions of indigenous cultures. Anthropologists believe that every two weeks a language disappears, a traditional culture comes to an end, and the collective herbal wisdom of a people vanishes.

“Around the world we see more and more young people reluctant to learn their mother tongue, or to carry on the traditions of their elders, whether from internal or external forces,” said Ashley Glenn, Sacred Seeds program manager at the WLBC at the Missouri Botanical Garden. “When knowledge of medicinal plant use is lost, it is lost forever, discontinuing a legacy of healing and denying future generations the health and prosperity we hold.”

Sacred Seeds gardens are currently located in Luna Nueva, Costa Rica; Huamachuco, Peru; Madagascar; and the Missouri Botanical Garden. Plans are underway to break ground on a site in Crow Creek Reservation, S.D. Each Sacred Seeds site is chosen for its individuality. Depending on the circumstances of the local plants and people, the goal is to encourage and facilitate the growth of these sanctuaries based on the following ideas:

Plant Conservation: Researchers work with each sanctuary to explore all options to ensure the continuous presence of local plant resources.

Harboring Ancient Knowledge: To preserve cultural traditions, botanical information of useful plants is documented and available to the community in the local language.

A Venue for Creating and Sharing: Each sanctuary fosters discussions and encourages traditional practices, experimentation, education, conservation, and cultural celebration.

Sustainability through Practicality: Bringing economic benefits to the local community, researchers encourage the harvest and use of the cultivated plants for responsible income building.

Engagement of Local Communities: Local people are involved in every level of creation and management, and the sanctuary is a living testament to their history.

Emphasis on Education: Researchers work with each garden to create programs that focus on conservation education, home gardening, sustainable harvest practices, and the cultural history of plant use.

Constructive Communication: Sacred Seeds sanctuaries throughout the world share advice, questions, problems, and successes. This benefits each community, each ecosystem, and the world as a whole.

The first Sacred Seeds garden, Santuario Semillas Sagradas, was created at Luna Nueva, an organic and Biodynamic® rainforest education center and lodge in Costa Rica. The sanctuary is a collection of medicinal plants that protects and celebrates not only biological diversity in Costa Rica and the tropics, but also the diversity of cultural knowledge related to these plants worldwide. Santuario Semillas Sagradas is dedicated to protecting endangered medicinal plants of the neotropics and is one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive sanctuaries for endangered plant species.

For more information about the Sacred Seeds program at the WLBC at the Missouri Botanical Garden, visit www.wlbcenter.org.

To view Missouri Botanical Garden's web page on Zoo and Aquarium Visitor, go to:  http://www.zandavisitor.com/forumtopicdetail-1032-Missouri_Botanical_Garden