Not many people know that Vancouver is part of a worldwide
effort to save the world's endangered plant species from
extinction. When Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, came to town in
2009, she visited VanDusen Botanical Garden to plant a tree. But
she did much more than that. She also initiated a process that
allowed the garden to become part of a project started in 2000
by Kew Garden in London to establish a Millennium Seed Bank — a
kind of Noah's ark for seed designed to preserve the world's
most threatened plant species for future generations. It is
estimated that a third of the world's total number of plants
species — between 60,000 and 100,000 — are threatened with
extinction. Changes in land use, climate change and
overexploitation are the main factors aggravating the situation.
Camilla came to VanDusen with a gift of seed from the Millennium
Bank — Gaillardia artista, Helianthus maximiliani, Penstemon
procerus, Nothochelone nemorosa, Hydrophyllum tenuipes and
Brodiaea coronaria. In exchange, VanDusen's dir