The year was 2006 and it had been almost two years since the only population on the Fern Peninsula Christella dentata had disappeared from the Los Alcornocales Natural Park in Cádiz. So the technicians at the Andalusian Plant Propagation Laboratory had an ingenious idea. “We took a soil sample from the last known place it was and we put it to germinate. It came from everything, including the fern,” boasts Laura Plaza, coordinator of the Laboratory and the Andalusian Network of Botanical and Mycological Gardens. More than 17 years later, the homework is more than done and the same thing could hardly happen again: the plant—listed in danger of extinction—is already reintroduced to its habitat, its seeds are safe, it is also present in the gardens and the complete recipe for how to germinate it again is well documented.
Andalusia has a kind of Noah’s ark that carefully guards the secret of how to protect species like the Christella dentata of extinction and potential natural disasters, which are increasingly common. It is in the El Castillejo Botanical Garden, located in the Cadiz town of El Bosque and in the heart of the Sierra de Grazalema Natural Park. There, a few kilometers from the place that rains the most in Spain (geopositioned in the neighboring town of Grazalema), a year ago the Ministry of Sustainability, Environment and Blue Economy moved the Plant Propagation Laboratory, created in 2003. “Our work is propagate threatened species. Don’t look for anything like that in Spain that protects flora and biodiversity,” boasts Antonio Rivas, technician at the El Castillejo Garden.
The uniqueness that Rivas boasts goes far beyond the laboratory and encompasses a display that has been perfected since the creation in 2001 of the Andalusian Network of Botanical Gardens, 11 facilities scattered throughout the community, based on ecological criteria to cover each biogeographic sector in the most efficient way possible. “Each one adapts to their area,” says Plaza. From these centers, the technical team is deployed throughout its surroundings in constant field work in which they analyze the state, geoposition and collect seeds of the more than 4,000 taxa – groups of related organisms – that make up the Andalusian wild flora, the 60% of Iberian plant biodiversity. This deployment is completed with the Germplasm Bank, located in Córdobain which seeds, bulbs, pollen, spores are stored for an indefinite period of time, as support for the study and propagation activity carried out by the Cádiz laboratory and which is turned into an application that collects all the information discovered.
Outside, it is a sunny Monday morning in November at 18 degrees, but inside one of the laboratory’s germination chambers it is almost dawn and it is 20 degrees. “We reproduce conditions of a day of 16 hours of light, eight of darkness and constant temperature,” explains Plaza. The Castillejo receives the seeds from the different gardens, and cleans, sifts and weighs them before germinating them, right at the pass where various ferns and a water lily from Doñana are found. “We have up to 2,000 accessions,” explains Plaza, referring to a repository of species with their corresponding location codes.
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Dozens of Pinsapo seedlings —Abies Pinsapo, endemic to the mountains of Cádiz and Málaga and in danger of extinction— show their dark green tips in the nursery attached to the laboratory under signs that read “Sierra Bermeja” and “Grazalema”. They coexist with ferns – along with firs they are the protagonists of two of the Ministry’s four recovery and conservation plans -, water lilies and coastal plants of Malaga that were lost from their habitat after a storm. “The garden is an experience in which you can know the problems that each species may require, and also not threats,” says Plaza. And all the information about the seeds, their germination and the first steps of the specimens ends up being part of the germination protocols, a kind of “complete recipe from the plant to planting it again,” as Plaza adds.
They use this manual in the laboratory when they carry out field work to restore and propagate species or when a natural disaster devastates those locations. When the fire devoured 10,000 hectares of Sierra Bermeja in September 2021, Rivas almost knew “in real time” the species that were being lost, just by knowing the location of the flames. “We had them all here or in the germplasm bank. After a fire he begins a long job with a multidisciplinary team,” adds the technician. The work is arduous and requires constant readjustment to the new reality resulting from the disaster, which can cause the displacement of species.
“Climate change and the lack of water are wreaking havoc,” Plaza bluntly acknowledges. So much so that the laboratory itself ended up moving a year ago from the Sevillian nursery of San Jerónimo to El Castillejo, where the temperatures and rains are much more benign for the species. But there is still room for hope. As a result of field work and collaboration with various researchers, the discoveries of new species in the region are so regular that, since the garden network was launched, the known biodiversity of Andalusian flora has already grown to a catalog of 4,500 taxa. “And they continue to be described and located,” says Plaza. “A year ago it was the last one and we already have it in the garden,” Rivas boasts. The small bush of the Euphorbia guadalhorcensis That after be discovered by scientists from the University of Malagagrows lustrous in one of the nursery trays, is a good example of this.
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