Seed transfer guidelines and zones are used to manage the movement of plant materials, but by the end of the century many landscapes across the globe will have climates that are incompatible with current vegetation. The mismatch in rates between...

Restoration projects that support pollinators are becoming increasingly popular. Pollinating insects require resources, including nectar and pollen, throughout the growing season. However, commercially available seed mixes vary considerably in their...

In 2012, more than two million acres of important sage-brush habitat burned in four Western States. In the East, Hurricane Sandy caused not only widespread damage to homes and businesses, but also to native plant communities that stabilize soils and...

Native plant communities are key to ecosystem health, resiliency, and productivity. Since its creation, the Forest Service has been using native plants in reforestation, rangeland improvement, watershed restoration, wildlife enhancement, mine...

Extinctions of species and subspecific taxa in hotspots of biodiversity deserve special attention. After more than 40 years of major efforts, estimates of extinct plant taxa in California seem to be somewhat stabilized. The time is...

Recent estimates indicate that one-fifth of botanical species worldwide are considered at risk of becoming extinct in the wild. One available strategy for conserving many rare plant species is reintroduction, which holds much promise especially when...

Impacts of global climate change, habitat loss, and other environmental changes on the world's biota and peoples continue to increase, especially on islands and in high elevation areas. Just as floristic diversity is affected by environmental change,...

Botanic gardens around the world maintain collections of living plants for science, conservation, education, beauty and more. These collections change over time e in scope and content e but the predicted impacts of climate change...

The PCA Federal Committee, chaired by the Bureau of Land Management, developed the “National Seed Strategy for Rehabilitation and Restoration 2015-2020” in cooperation with Federal and non-Federal partners. The “National Seed Strategy for...

Although only a minority of plant species have a specific human use, many more play important roles in natural ecosystems and the services they provide, and rare species are more likely to have unusual traits that could be useful in the future. The ...

The necessity to redesign and relandscape the interior of the Temperate Palmhouse at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) created the opportunity to undertake a full curatorial survey of the palms and other plants contained in the Palmhouse. This...

In this paper, the case for the conservation of plants that have arisen in cultivation is provided and the mechanisms for extinction discussed, with examples. The approach to cultivated plant conservation over the past 30 years is reviewed and a basis...

This is a great resource for learning about ex-situ conservation strategies and lessons learned outsite the botanic garden community that can be adopted to ensure genetic diversity of valued plant collections isn't lost in the future. 

Botanic gardens are organized around plant collections, and climate change will affect those collections. Land loss is expected for gardens near sea level, prompting a loss of plants from the collection. Future collection development requires planning...

Internationally, gardens hold diverse living collections that can be preserved for genomic research. Workflows have been developed for genomic tissue sampling in other taxa (e.g., vertebrates), but are inadequate for plants. We outline a workflow for...

For the first time, this peer-reviewed report presents the most up-to-date data on the status of plants on the New England landscape. The data discerns increases and declines in both rare and common species across all six states (encompassing 186,400...

Last year's State of the World’s Plants report focused predominantly on synthesising knowledge of the numbers of different categories of plants: How many vascular plants are currently known to science? How many are threatened with extinction? What is...

This publication documents the 81 posters and oral presentations that were made from May 16-19, 2016 in Chicago, IL covering such topics as in situ conservation, ex situ conservation, identifying and assessing ecosystems/species to conserve,...

Protecting natural habitats in priority areas is essential to halt the loss of biodiversity. Yet whether these benefits for biodiversity also yield benefits for human well-being remains controversial. Here this paper assesses the potential human well-...

This article investigates the scientific and communicative value of time-lapse imagery by exploring applications for data collection and visualization. Time-lapse imagery has a myriad of possible applications to study and depict ecosystems and...