Geneva seed bank stores seeds to protect threatened Swiss plants

The Geneva Botanical Garden is preserving seeds from nearly 800 threatened plant species in Switzerland at minus 20 degrees Celsius, in an effort to prevent their extinction, SRF reports.

The bank has collected seeds for 25 years. One of its recent successes is growing about 50 marsh saxifrage plants, a small yellow flower that is threatened with extinction in Switzerland. After several failed attempts and poor germination, the garden’s curator and seed bank director, Andreas Ensslin, said the team had managed to cultivate the plants. He hopes to see the species flowering in the Jura.

Seeds gathered in the field are first separated from plant samples and carefully cleaned so they can be counted. They are then dried to slow ageing and tested to determine how to make the plants germinate, Ensslin said. The bank’s technical staff member, Maya Wells, carries out the cleaning.

The marsh saxifrage is found across the Northern Hemisphere but is considered endangered in Central Europe. Ensslin said plants play important roles in nature, including pollination and filtering water and air. The Geneva garden now holds nearly half of Switzerland’s threatened plant species, and aims to preserve seeds from all of them as biodiversity declines.