Thoughts on the Ethical Collection of Wildflower Seeds in Austin
Minnette Marr (above), is a plant conservationist at the
Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. An interview by
Darrel Mayers
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As gardeners, can we simply go into public parks and collect native seeds for our gardens, rather than buying them in packets?
Austin Parks and Recreation Department encourages visitors to practice Leave No Trace principles. Leaving plants and other natural objects as you find them is one of those principles. However, many PARDs will allow one or two fruit to be collected from several plants.
Consider taking images of the plant in the park to share with the park manager when you ask permission to collect seeds and specifying when you plan to collect (e.g., Thursday afternoons).
In addition to parks, land designated for development is often home to native wildflowers. Some of my best seed collections have come from “vacant” lots. Follow the same procedure with the real estate agent as you would with a park manager.
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Talk me through the process of collecting native plant seeds, and then storing them. How is it done?
If the plants will be hard to relocate after the flowers fade, mark their location with a bright ribbon or dropped pin in smartphone map app. Monitor the plants once a week until the seeds start to disperse. If the fruits are explosively dehiscent (e.g. bluebonnets) or the seeds disperse on the wind (e.g. milkweeds), consider placing a small bag over the fruit to capture the seeds.
Alternatively, you can collect almost-ripe fruits and store them in a paper sack until they naturally open. After the dry fruit has opened, separate the seeds from the debris and frass.
Organza bags or coin envelopes allow the seeds to breathe until planting time. My labels include the name of the plant, the collecting site and date(s), and the number of seeds. Store in a cool, dry place with good air flow and mark your calendar with a date to sow.
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In a recent talk, George Cates from Native American Seed Co. spoke of a kind of seed collecting ethics, where one practice is considered ethical, and another unethical. Please share thoughts on the ethics of seed collecting. Is there an actual written agreement by experts about this?
Ethical seed collectors protect the seed source by limiting the number of seed collected in any given year from a wild population and watching the surrounding area for signs of imminent destruction.
If the source population will not be disturbed before seed mature the following growing season, collect no more than 20% of the seed. If the source population is in the path of development (e.g., roads, soccer fields, convenience stores), collect as many seeds as possible and share those seeds with the Central Texas Seed Savers and your local chapters of the Texas Master Gardener program, the Texas Master Naturalist program and the Native Plant Society of Texas.
I know that one of the goals of the Wildflower Center is to bring up the numbers of rare species. Is there a role for Austin's citizen gardeners to help in this process, by growing rare plants to help take them off the endangered species list?
Many listed species occur in habitats that would be difficult to create in a garden. For species that are not limited to a soil type, slope or aspect, gardeners can assist by increasing the availability of seeds with known provenance for use on protected sites in native habitats. Several vulnerable species in Austin are candidates for re-introduction into wildscapes protected from deer. These include plateau milkvine, Matelea edwardsensis (see photo above) in shady woodlands and glandular gayfeather, Liatris glandulosa, on limestone outcrops.
An additional 30 different plant species from Travis County are currently tracked by Texas Parks & Wildlife Department. When remnant populations of these tracked species are located, we try to collect seeds and establish propagation protocols. Gardeners can support these efforts by sharing locations of tracked species with TPWD and monitoring development of fruit for the Wildflower Center. The list of tracked species is available at this link: https://tpwd.texas.gov/gis/rtest/.
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What are some of the favorite things that you like about your current job?
1) Collaborating with diverse groups of co-workers, volunteers and land stewards gives me hope for the conservation of native plants and their associated fauna.
2) Watching the impact of the Native Plants of North America database increase as new audiences discover this online resource and contribute to it renews my optimism toward collective efforts.
3) Interacting with professors and graduate students from the University of Texas Field Research Station Network exposes me to new techniques for studying and restoring the native flora and fauna on site and beyond.
I saw that the Osage Orange (Maclura pomifera) or bois d'arc - pictured above - is one of your favorite plants. Why is that?
A bois d’arc tree conjures up two of my favorite memories. The backyard of my childhood home in the Eastern Cross Timbers followed a short segment of living fence that had been planted using bois d’arc saplings. (This was a common practice before barbed wire became widely available in the 1870s.)
By the time my dad and brother built a tree house in the largest bois d’arc in our backyard, the tree would have been at least 80 years old. Much larger bois d’arc trees grew in the forest on my maternal grandparents’ farm in the Piney Woods.
The durable wood of these trees was reserved for use as corner posts for barbed wire fences that separated the cows from the row crops. Some of the corner posts that my grandfather sank (with my help!) in the 1960s are still serving as corner posts today. ❦
Minnette's bio: After collecting seeds of local ecotypes for the Wetlands Restoration project in the headwaters of the San Marcos River twenty years ago, Minnette had the opportunity to join Wildflower Center staff and volunteers to establish the Center’s Seed Bank. Her favorite collections are made at rescue sites or those that target wildflowers that are not commercially available. Her current focus is on a goldenrod that will be used for an international research project.
