Towards establishing a global ex-situ collection of parasitic flora for research and conservation

Parasitic plants are defined by their unique mode of nutrition. They derive some or all of the materials required for growth and development by penetrating the living tissues of another plant, the host. They constitute 1% of the plant kingdom, approximately 4000 species and are spread across 27 families.

Previous studies have shown this group to be poorly represented in ex-situ collections. Whilst the current holdings of parasitic plants across the botanic garden network can be quantified from the PlantSearch database – this is of limited value as it does not show whether an accession is actively cultivated or simply exists on the wider garden estate. To address this situation, Alex Summers (National Botanic Garden of Wales) will be contacting all institutions that include a parasitic plant taxon in their records to acquire greater detail on the nature of this accession.

The aim will be to compile a baseline list of actively cultivated parasitic taxa. This will allow propagation and cultivation protocols to be developed for these taxa using the combined knowledge of the botanic gardens network. It will also allow missing families, genera, and threatened species to be identified as future acquisition targets for the BGCI network.