Yorkshire tree seeds collected by Kew team

NORTH YORKSHIRE’S national parks and reserves have provided conservationists with specimen seeds for the UK’s first national tree seed collection.

A team from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew made the journey to Yorkshire to source seeds from its ancient woodland and upland areas.

Kew fieldwork officer, Ian Willey, who was part of the collecting team, said native woodland above 984ft (300m) had been massively reduced in the UK, making it difficult to find the right target populations.

However, they were able to find a good collection of holly seeds in the upland areas around Craven and Yockenthwaite.

These along with yew and spindle seeds sourced from our ancient woodlands, will go into the Millennium Seed Bank, held in the underground vaults at Kew.

The collection is part of the UK National Seed Project, which is due to come to a close in March.

The project has been running since 2013 with funding from the People’s Postcode Lottery.

“We have made a few trips to Yorkshire since the project started,” said Mr Willey.

“It has amazing well conserved national parks and visiting them is always a joy. Overall we have collected 730,000 seeds from 24 species using 568 maternal plants across the county.”

Mr Willey said the seed bank was not only important for conservation but was also a working collection providing an essential resource for researchers.

“We can’t predict diseases such as Ash Dieback and this is a working collection which will help research into pests, diseases and issues such as climate change.”