Seed bank's role in saving our native plants examined

KEEPER: Craig McGill heads the New Zealand Indigenous Flora Seed Bank. PHOTO/ SUPPLIED 260215WCFLORA1

Wanganui people get to hear how the seeds of native plants are being saved - as insurance against their extinction - in a talk on Tuesday night.

It's at the Davis Lecture Theatre at 7.30pm, during a meeting of the Wanganui Museum Botanical Group.

Craig McGill and Jessica Schnell will be outlining the history and current work of the New Zealand Indigenous Flora Seed Bank based at Massey University. Mr McGill leads the project, and Mrs Schnell co-ordinates it.

They say New Zealand has about 2600 different groups of native plants, with about 80 per cent of them found nowhere else in the world.

An increasing number are in decline or threatened with extinction, and their seed is being saved in a cool, dry environment.

The seed bank began in 2013 as a project shared by Massey University, AgResearch, the Department of Conservation, Landcare Research and the New Zealand Plant Conservation Network.

It's part of the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership based at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in the United Kingdom.