Sacred Seeds, an international non-profit that supports plant conservation and addresses the rapid loss of biodiversity and cultural knowledge, has extended its reach to Europe through collaboration with L’Herboretum whose international headquarters are in Saint-Ay, France.  Sacred Seeds is a network of plant gardens devoted to preserving plants of medicinal and cultural significance. The program is administered by the Missouri Botanical Garden’s William L. Brown Center.

The Missouri Botanical Garden will host a number of leading individuals and organizations May 1-2 to evaluate and share information on how ethnobotany and economic botany can contribute to a greater global strategy for plant conservation. Participants in the workshop include representatives from Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden in China, Bioversity International in Italy and The New York Botanical Garden among others.

Researchers at the Missouri Botanical Garden’s William L. Brown Center have discovered extraordinarily high levels of omega fatty acids in a species which they encountered in Northern Peru. Omega fatty acids are essential for human health and must be obtained through food sources. Omega-3 fatty acids are also widely used in cosmetics.

The Tibetan sacred mountain Khawa Karpo supports one of the world’s most exceptional areas of plant and animal diversity. Now, this critical biodiversity hotspot is threatened with destruction from climate change, the stripping of resources and rapid development. Dr. Jan Salick at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, and Robert Moseley, director of conservation for The Nature Conservancy in Illinois, are leaders in their field. In their new book, “Khawa Karpo: Tibetan Traditional Knowledge and Biodiversity Conservation,” Salick and Moseley detail their vital conservation programs focused on Tibetan traditional knowledge of ethnobotany, ecology and natural resource management.