Botanical Garden Essay

On September 23, 2016, five members of the Conservation Biology course traveled to the Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis, Missouri to observe how institutions such as botanical gardens and arboretums work to conserve plant species from around the nation. In addition to caring for living collections of common and rare species, they also freeze seeds to keep in seed banks. These seeds can be thawed and germinated years and sometimes even decades after being frozen. During our trip to the botanical garden we explored the gardens, spoke with Dr. Christie Edwards and Dr. Matthew Albrecht about their conservation efforts, and observed rare species in their living collections. A rare species I found particularly intriguing during our visit was Alluaudia humbertii, a cacti plant native to Madagascar. The Missouri Botanical Gardens has twelve gardens on its main campus. Many of the gardens are homes to plants from different countries, such as Seiwa-wen Japanese Garden, which offers many plants native to East Asia to observe. (MoBot). In addition to worldly flora, the botanical gardens also have planted a variety of native plants, indicated by a symbol of Missouri. We also visited the Climatron, the world’s first geodesic dome greenhouse made to house a variety of tropical and rainforest plants from all over the world. The …show more content…
Due to “charcoal production, agricultural expansion…, and wildfires” occurring on the island the spiny-forest is becoming fragmented and quickly disappearing. (Crowley, Helen). More people continue to move towards the spiny-forest as a new irrigation pipeline was built i. (Sussman). The fragmentation has also disturbed the patterns of the six primate species that inhabit the spiny forest and are important consumers in the lifecycle of the cactus plants. Based on satellite information an estimated 14,000-17,000 sq. acres of spiny forest still exist. (Crowley,