Logan Curator to help save threatened plants in Vietnam

Logan Curator Richard Baines is among a group of modern day plant hunters who will travel to Vietnam this month to collect seed material from a range of threatened and endangered plants to aid their conservation.

Richard will be visiting remote mountainous sites in NW Vietnam during the three-week fieldtrip, including Bach Moc Luong Tu, the country’s fourth largest mountain, only discovered four years ago.

The trip will follows on from a very successful visit to Vietnam in 2014 when nearly 500 collections were made including the critically endangered Aesculus wangii which only exists as a single population.

In the forthcoming trip, Richard will be joined by counterparts from Glasgow Botanic Garden, Cambridge botanic Garden, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Institute of Ecology & Biological Resources, Hanoi.

Looking forward to his next adventure, Richard commented: “The forthcoming trip will tackle different mountains in the same region hopefully identifying some new species along the way. We are particularly keen to collect seed from threatened and endangered plants including Magnolias and Rhododendrons. The seed will be used to rear plants which will add to the collections here at Logan, and potentially at the three other Gardens of RBGE.’’

ENDS