Kew experts to conserve meadow plants

Experts at Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank are turning their hand to propagating an array of native flowers to help restore vanishing habitat such as meadows.

The UK Native Seed Hub aims to grow plants which have proved difficult to cultivate in restoration programmes, to boost efforts by seed companies and conservation groups to create diverse habitats full of flowers.

The project is initially concentrating on the lowland meadows that make up part of the country’s semi-natural grassland habitats, 98 per cent of which have vanished from England and Wales since the 1930s.

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What remains is fragmented into plots averaging just two hectares – around the size of two football pitches – which Michael Way, one of the team leading the new project, warns is barely enough to support the wildlife that relies on them.

Efforts to introduce native species to new sites have hit problems because cutting and gathering hay from existing meadows only captures plants which are in seed at the time of mowing, while some species have proved hard to germinate.

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, project aims to increase the quality, quantity and diversity of native plants and seeds for conservation organisations and landowners, and to provide advice on getting the flowers to grow.

The scheme has started by growing lowland meadow species such as the devil’s bit scabious, cuckoo flower, green field-speedwell and harebell at temporary seed production beds in the walled nursery at the Millennium Seed Bank’s Wakehurst Place, West Sussex.

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Larger permanent seed beds stretching over a hectare (2.5 acres) are being prepared to harvest seeds that can then be grown on by seed companies to bulk up their supplies for conservation groups and landowners to use.

Kew director Professor Stephen Hopper said: “As the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership moves forward into its next decade, environmental challenges are becoming ever more acute.

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