New plant species in the Botanical Garden
International cooperation between botanical gardens holds great value for the development of collections and the protection of particularly valuable species. Thanks to such activities, the Botanical Garden of the University of Wrocław has been enriched with more than 70 new species of succulent, tropical, aquatic and ground plants. Many of these are protected plants from natural sites. They cannot be bought, either in a shop or in a nursery.
The Botanical Garden of the UWr will include an unusual plant called Amborella trichopoda, currently growing only on the island of New Caledonia. Amborella is one of the oldest developmental lineages of angiosperms (flowering plants) and is the only representative of the genus in the world. It is distinguished by the lack of vessels in the vascular bundle, which is its original feature.
Another curiosity associated with this plant is the ability to change sex and the specific DNA in the mitochondria made up of genes from many plant groups – also known as the ‘tomb of other people’s genes’ . Amborella mitochondrial DNA is several times larger than in other plants. It contains acquired genes from other organisms in green algae, several species of mosses, as well as numerous angiosperms including bamboo, beech, sandalwood and wolfberry.
We can call Amborella the ‘missing cell’ in the plant world. It can provide information on how angiosperms evolved from angiosperm plants.
The plant is a gift from the Botanical Garden in Bonn. Now, the Botanical Garden UWr has the difficult task of rooting the plant and creating good growing conditions for it.
The staff of the Botanical Garden would like to thank the director of the Botanical Garden of the University of Bonn (Botanische Gärten der Universität Bonn) Prof. Maximilian Weigend, the curator of the garden Cornelia Löhne, as well as all the staff (Bernhold, Stefan, Patrick, Felix and others) for their kindness, generosity and valuable cooperation and the opportunity to expand their existing knowledge.
