A Living Collection | Naples Botanical Garden

You would not let Starry Night fade, the Key Marco Cat crumble, a Gutenberg Bible mold. Much in the same way museums preserve our cultural and historic treasures, botanical gardens protect the world’s rarest plants. While conservationists prefer to safeguard them in their native habitats, doing so is not always possible—not with climbing temperatures, rising sea level, changing weather patterns, invasive species and human encroachment. That’s why our scientists collaborate with fellow experts to collect plant material from Florida, America and the Caribbean. Through seed banking and by growing threatened plants in our display gardens, we make sure these plants don’t go extinct even if their native habitats are lost. As a bonus, our guests get to see unique species from the subtropics during their visits here. Some important collections include:

Orchids

A perennial favorite of visitors, our impressive orchid collection includes more than 1,600 species and hybrids. Orchids have more species than any other flowering plant family, but they are extremely susceptible to habitat changes and loss. That’s why research and conservation efforts are critical.

Swamp bay

The Persea palustris grows abundantly in Florida; nevertheless, we’ve started collecting its genetic material, concerned about threats posed by a fungus that a nonnative insect, the redbay ambrosia beetle, introduces to host trees. The resulting disease, laurel wilt, also poses a serious risk to the swamp bay’s cousin, the avocado.

Seed banking

The Garden recently started a seed bank with a focus on preserving native plants. In tandem with that effort, we are conducting research on the best strategies to grow these species—in many cases breaking new ground in our understanding of Southwest Florida plants.

The Herbarium of Southwestern Florida

Located at the Naples Botanical Garden, the Herbarium of Southwestern Florida exceeds 42,000 samples of Florida native plants, collected, pressed and chronicled by retired biology professor Dr. George Wilder.