Abstract Detail

Ecology

Dreisilker, Kurt [1], Culley, Theresa [2], Havens, Karyi [3], Schultz, Brittany [4], Cavallin, Nadia [5], Alba, Christina [6].

The Use of Public Gardens as Sentinels of Invasive Plants.

A particular challenge for invasion biologists is in understanding factors underlying plant invasions in the earliest stages of their spread, well before these plants have been recognized as problematic across a large geographic area. We propose that public gardens can fulfill an important role by acting as sentinels for potentially new invasive plants. This can be accomplished by the gardens as they collect, synthesize, and share data about how collections taxa spread from their original sites of cultivation into adjacent areas of the property. These data can be much more impactful and comparable if public gardens use a common methodology. To this end, the Public Gardens as Sentinels against Invasive Plants working group (PGSIP) has developed guidelines for gardens to collect, organize and share information from their collections when plants escape from cultivation. PGSIP has also developed a restricted access database for gardens to upload and access information about plants spreading from cultivation. By collecting data from gardens across North America, PGSIP expects to provide a clear picture about potentially problematic plants escaping cultivation before large-scale invasions occur and before commercial adoption of these taxa into the broader horticulture industry, particularly for taxa mainly found in public gardens. In this presentation, we describe the accomplishments of PGSIP over the past few years, including the latest data of problematic plants identified from gardens that have already contributed their data. We encourage botanic gardens and arboreta to use the guidelines PGSIP has developed and submit their data to the shared-access database, eventually for use as a resource within the broader botanical community.

1 - The Morton Arboretum, Natural Resources, 4100 Illinois Route 53, Lisle, IL, 60532, USA
2 - University Of Cincinnati, Department Of Biological Sciences, 614 Rieveschl Hall, Cincinnati, OH, 45221, United States
3 - Chicago Botanic Garden, 1000 Lake Cook Road, Glencoe, IL, 60022, USA
4 - Missouri Botanical Garden, 4344 Shaw Blvd, St. Louis, MO, 63110, USA
5 - Royal Botanical Gardens, Science, Burlington, ON, Canada
6 - Denver Botanic Gardens, 1007 York Street, Denver, CO, 80206, USA

Keywords:
botanical garden
Invasive
ornamental
arboreta.

Presentation Type: Poster
Number: PEC014
Abstract ID:719
Candidate for Awards:None