Vol. 46 No. 3 Summer 1986 Page PLANT CONSERVATION: PART I 2 Saving the Rarest Arnoldia (ISSN 0004-2633, USPS 866-100) is published Donald A. Falk m and fall the quarterly wmter, spring, summer, by Francis R. Thibodeau Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. Subscriptions are $12.00 per calendar year domestic, 19 Charles Edward Faxon, delmeamt $15.00 per calendar year foreign, payable m advance. Smgle copies are $3.50. All remittances must be m 23 To the Arks with Rabbitbane: Plant U.S. check drawn on a U S bank or dollars, by by Conservation at the Arnold Arboretum international order. Send money subscnption orders, Robert G. Nicholson remittances, change-of-address notices, and all other subscription-related communications to: Arnoldia, 26 Professors and Pursue Shortia The Arnold Arboretum, The Arborway, Jamaica Plain, Gray Sargent MA 02130-2795. 33 Endangered Plants at the Garden in the Postmaster. Send address changes to: Woods: Problems and Possibilities ’ Amoldia William E. Brumback The Arnold Arboretum The Arborway 36 At the Edge of Extinction: Useful Plants of Jamaica MA 02130-2795 Plam, the Border States of the Umted States and Copyright © 1986, The President and Fellows of Mexico Harvard College. Gary Paul Nabhan Ruth Greenhouse Edmund A. Schofield, Editor Wendy Hodgson Peter Del Tredici, Associate Editor Marion D. Editorial Assistant Cahan, (Volunteer/ 47 Renaissance at Walden Elise Sigal, Calendar Editor (Volunteer/1 Mary P. Sherwood Front cover: Lilmm gray Sereno Watson, the roan, or Gray’s, lily, a potentially endangered species native to 59 Herbert Wendell Gleason, Photographer Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Asa Gray dis- covered this rare lily on Roan Mountam, North Caro- lina, m 1840. From Flora and Sylva, Volume 1 (1903/. (See page 2.) Opposite: A Kamsa Indian student of Native folklore holding the flower and leaves of one of the potent medicmal and hallucmogemc solanaceous plants of the Valley of Sibundoy, Colombia. Photograph by Richard Evans Schultes. In the Fall issue of Amoldia, Professor Schultes will emphasize the importance of preserving lore about the uses of Amazoman plants. This page. Bird-foot violets (Viola pedata L/, photo- graphed by Herbert Wendell Gleason m Concord, Massa- chusetts, on May 26, 1900. Used through the courtesy of Heather C. Conover and Nick Mills. (See page 59.) inside back cover: John Muir resting m the Sierra Nevada. Photograph from the Archives of the Arnold Arboretum. (See page 61.) Back cover: A giant xionmu hs~enmu/ tree m Reserve, (Burreuodendron Longrm 61 A Visit from Muir Guangxi, Chma. Photograph by Dr. Wang Xianpu. Con- John servation of xianmu will be discussed m the Fall issue of Amoldia. 63 BOOKS Saving the Rarest Donald A. Falk Francis R. Thibodeau By cultivating endangered native plants a nationwide network of botanical gardens and arboreta hopes to produce stock that can be used to reestablish endangered plants in the wild once their natural habitats have been rehabilitated Like many desert plants, Agave arizonica which should enhance its chances for recov- was in serious decline during the 1960s. By ery. the middle of the decade it had been reduced A dramatic intervention, perhaps, but not to two known localities with only a handful so unusual as one might think, for in recent of plants. Despite attempts to protect the years botanical gardens and arboreta in the remaining individuals, the species-which United States and abroad have become in- tends to grow in populations of very low creasingly active in protecting and conserv- densities-continued to suffer from grazing ing native species of plants. Conservation is and collecting and was apparently on the rapidly becoming a mission of many gardens road to extinction. In 1968, staff members and arboreta, alongside their traditional mis- of the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, sions of display, research, and education. In Arizona, took an interest in the species. coming decades, botanical gardens and ar- Working primarily with bulbils and tissue boreta should become vital for the conser- cultures, they managed to establish a culti- vation and understanding of the world’s ra- vated stand from which scores of plants have rest plants. since been propagated for distribution and in the wild. The Garden has also replanting The Problem of Extinction played a key role in pubhc education and has worked cooperatively with the national The tragic extinction of species worldwide, Fish and Wildlife Service to help locate and which is primarily a consequence of wide- manage the remaining wild populations. spread destruction of habitat in the Tropics, Thirty-one clonal populations are now is now well recognized (Myers, 1979). known from a one hundred-square-mile Human-induced extinction of species is not area. Agave arizonica was officially listed as hmited to the Tropics, however, but is hap- a protected endangered species in 1984, pening in every nation on earth. In the United States alone at least three thousand species of higher plants are believed to be - Opposite: Drawmg of Franklima alatamaha Marsh., endangered or threatened with extinction, Frankhnia, or the Franklm Charles Edward tree, by fifteen of the nation’s entire Faxon (1846-1918). Frankhnia is beheved to be exunct roughly percent m the mld but is mdely cultivated m botamcal gar- flora (Prance and Elias, 1977; Ayensu and dens and elsewhere Many dramngs by Faxon, both DeFilipps, 1978). Agencies of the Federal and m this previously pubhshed unpubhshed, appear Government with these issue of Amoldia. Most are from materials in the Ar- charged protecting chives of the Arnold Arboretum. species-most notably the Office of Endan- 4 gered Species in the Fish and Wildlife Ser- country. vice-operate on severely limited budgets Meanwhile, extinction accelerates. Com- and simply do not have the means to eval- mercial, industrial, and agricultural "de- uate the status of the thousands of plant taxa velopment" continues to destroy tens of that have been proposed under the terms of thousands of acres yearly; much of this land the Endangered Species Act (Anonymous, is logged, mined, or converted for recrea- 1984a). Moreover, very few taxa-one tional uses, even though it technically re- hundred as of this writing-have survived mains "protected" under the jurisdiction of the administrative procedure for officially a Federal or state agency, such as the Bureau listing a taxon as "endangered" under the of Land Management. Other sources of dan- provisions of the Act (Anonymous, 1984b), ger are more subtle but no less insidious. though they may have such status under Elias (1977) estimates that twenty-two per- state laws. In fact, however, plants do not cent of the flora of the United States consists receive the same degree of protection that of naturalized species, many of which (Lyth- animals do because the law regards them as rum salicaria, the common purple loose- part of the property on which they grow and hence may be privately owned. Thus, under the current formulation of the Act, the sale and interstate transport of endangered plants is restricted, but the destruction or taking of wild individuals from private land tech- nically is not. The Act’s primary effect is to prevent the use of Federal funds for projects that would destroy or alter the habitats of endangered taxa. In this context, when the presence of rare plants might hold up com- mercial-development projects, it is not un- usual for wild populations of rare plants to be destroyed before anyone can protect their habitats permanently. Other Federal agen- cies (such as the Forest Service, Park Service, and Bureau of Land Management) cooperate with the Office of Endangered Species by law-but they, too, have competing de- mands for their budgets and for the land they control, especially since Congress is not uniformly friendly to the protection of en- dangered species when there is a conflict. Outside of the Federal Government, a single private conservation organization-The Na- ture Conservancy-has been almost solely for the vast of natural- responsible majority Calochortus obispoensis Lemmon, the San Lms man- habitat acquisition in the nation. The Con- posa, a candidate for legal protection under the En- servancy has managed to protect more than dangered Species Act. Further information on mld populations of this species is needed before it can be two million acres of natural habitat prime officially hsted, however. This drawmg, by C. E. Faxon, in over three thousand locations across the is from the Archives of the Arnold Arboretum. 5 strife, for example) compete with native plants and may hterally crowd them out of existence. Native species have suffered from such introduced diseases as Dutch elm dis- ease and chestnut blight, against which they have no resistance. In the face of such multifarious threats to species diversity, it is essential that every available resource be mobilized. In recent years, botanical gardens and arboreta have become important new members of the conservation community. Although their enormous potential to intervene in species extinction has only begun to be realized, there are many hopeful signs that they will be increasingly active in the preservation of endangered plant species. The Increasing Importance of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta Recently, Dr. Peter Ashton, Director of the Arnold Arboretum, noted that botamcal gar- dens and arboreta should view themselves as "basic resources" in conservation and re- search. He notes (Ashton, 1984) that botanic gardens have an opportumty, mdeed an obligation which is open to them alone, to bridge between the traditional concerns of systematic biology and the retummg needs of agriculture, forestry, and medicine for the exploration and conservation of biological diversity. Others-Schultes (1983), Lucas (1984), and Synge and Townsend (1979), for example- have similarly noted the potential im- portance of gardens for research on and con- servation of endangered species.