Partnerships are integral within the Florida plant conservation community. Spanning decades, the Rare Plant Conservation Program continues to play a key role in the strong community of various non-profit, academic, foundation, and governmental organizations throughout Florida to make wide-reaching and important impacts towards understanding and preserving Florida’s unique habitats and species. Working together greatly expands the breadth of the work of any one organization, and the exchange of scientific contributions among the field’s leading professionals keeps the Florida conservation community on the cutting edge of conservation success.
In July, the Rare Plant Conservation Program joined ecologists from Archbold Biological Station for an experimental introduction of the endangered Avon Park harebells (Crotalaria avonensis) into a protected site in Polk County. The plants had been propagated during the spring months in Bok Tower Gardens’ Newton greenhouse from cuttings collected from three wild populations. More than 300 plants were grown and nursed by Rare Plant Conservation Program staff and volunteers. Most of the plants were provided to Archbold for the introduction, with the rest accessioned into the National Collection beds at Bok Tower Gardens for preservation.
Archbold Biological Station staff prepared the introduction site, preselected the location for each plant based on maternal lineage and source population, and set up an irrigation system. On planting day, Bok Tower Gardens’ Rare Plant Specialist Chico Rivera demonstrated the planting technique found to be successful for this species. This introduction event augmented an initial planting of Avon Park harebells that was successfully performed at the same location several years prior. In the years following that initial introduction, good data was obtained on the best time of year to collect cuttings, the optimum introduction timeframe, and whether seedlings or plants grown from cuttings might be best to create a new population. The July 2024 augmentation was based on that knowledge, and will build on those findings by providing additional data in the upcoming years on population dynamics and the resiliency of the different maternal lines.
Archbold Biological Station has been an integral part of Florida’s plant biology research and has contributed invaluable data that enrich conservation sciencepartners throughout Florida. And in partnership, the Rare Plant Conservation Program at Bok Tower Gardens is proud to contribute to preventing the extinction of Avon Park harebells.
Blog written by Cheryl Peterson, Rare Plant Conservation Manager at Bok Tower Gardens.