Saving For The Future, Seed By Seed

Seed Banks Helping Protect Rare And Endangered Plants From Extinction

(CBS)  An almost hidden driveway in suburban Portland, Ore., doesn't lead to another million-dollar mansion, but instead, to an old house, a six-acre garden and priceless project: saving part of the world's fragile ecosystem one plant at a time.

“Not since the age of dinosaurs have things been going extinct at the rate they are now," says Ed Guerrant, director of the Berry Botanical Center.

The dinosaurs couldn't be saved, but the pale larkspur, Western lily and Nelson's checker-mallow can... by collecting their seeds before they go extinct.

"We can store seeds and keep them alive for tens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of years,” says Guerrant.

The seeds are stored at the Berry Botanic Seed Bank, which is a freezer inside a vault.

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Hughes Blogs: Seeds Of Life

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Right now up to one-fifth of the Earth's plants are in trouble. Fluctuating temperatures from global warming means some plants that need cold conditions are too warm, and those that need rain aren't getting it. Other plants are being pushed to extinction by too much building. But why should we care?

“Everything that we do depends on plants and it just makes sense to preserve as much of that as we can,” says Andrea Raven, a botanist at the Berry Botanical Center.

Many plants have been the source for medicine that cures disease. Take the rosy periwinkle, which is native to Madigascar. Before its properties were discovered, only 10 percent of children with leukemia lived. But from the plant, scientists created a compound that helped increase the survival rate.

"With the compound, the rate has now gone up to 95 percent,” Raven says. “Who knows what else is out there in nature's pharmacy.”

Today, botanists can be found re-growing populations of endangered plants all over the northwest. Across the Atlantic. just outside London, England's Millennium Seed Bank Project has built a towering fortress to house all the world's plant life.

"We will have 10 percent of the world’s seeds by 2010 and we would like to go on and have a quarter of the world’s species by 2020,” says Paul Smith, director of the Millennium Seed Bank Project.

One in six of all wild plants are used for medicine. One in 10 are used for food, especially in developing countries. The need to bank seeds worldwide is urgent.

Even for the appropriately named "ugly lettuce" in Oregon. The pitiful looking plant might have some very important value.

“Exactly,” Raven says. “We could find the cure for AIDS in this or some other function, you don’t know until things are explored."

A billion seeds have been banked worldwide. It’s an environmental savings account where each deposit could mean a cure for disease.

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Tuesday, in part two of our series, we'll look at a promising new cancer drug. Believe it or not, it comes from dirt.

[tcoleman12]

Funny, isn''t there a number of scientists that also say this "Global Warming" thing is ***? Where is their side to this story? I don''t care if these guys store seeds for the next 150 years. They will be able to plant them when the cycle comes back around.

[whispyseas]

'' ... dared girls, having learned what the good rapist dare boys are all about, grew up to drag their kids kicking and screaming to the dare houses for their own educational salvation ... most girls raped though were raped by their own familys, and too have no qualms about not freeing the children as were freed the women ... ''


'' ... most folk most time don''t dance get well feed world songs, they dance get sick tax world songs, and not rallied around the hundreds millions sick beds drifting but around the hundreds millions well beds racing, amoung the tens millions spore bloom weed dragon trail fickle first aid lunch farm cottage studio trail groups ... ''

[feelfree1]

Re: "Seed Banks Helping Protect Rare And Endangered Plants From Extinction"

They are also helping to defend the destruction of our food supply from Genetically Modified Franken-food contamination that is poduced by greedy, short-sighted, environmental terrorist organizations like ADM and Monsanto.

www.percyschmeiser.com

[tnt1954]

i saw that movie too, in 1972. growing plants
in space under electric bulb incandescent light.
white light. as far as saving money for the
future, forget it, its all wiped out by inflation.
''lettuce'' is another name for counterfeit money.
counterfeiters deserve counterfeit food in prison.
a real rubber plant salad. yum yum? luther
burbank did more than most for botany. horticulture.
ya need about 50 jumbos to make your electric bills.
i''m glad to see someone is that optimistic about
the future. i''m just more naturally pessimistic.
honeymoon salad is kinda fun to have, lettuce alone.

[bombero41]

I was immediately reminded of the Sci-Fi film "Silent Running," starring Bruce Dern and the three bots. The movie carries the message that to save the plants of the earth -- or its climate, or its peoples, or whatever -- it would take the dedication of a few because the government had "better" things to do (politically motiviated agendas). This movie came about in a dynamic environmentally active time following the creation of Earth Day. How prophetic. "Take good care of the forest, Dewey."