Rhoda Maurer treks the hills of Kentucky to collect new plants

In September 2016, Director of Horticulture Rhoda Maurer participated in a plant-collecting trip in Southeast Kentucky to add diversity to our collections. Cornell Botanic Gardens is part of the Plant Collecting Collaborative, a network of public gardens and arboreta that collects wild plants to grow at their home institutions. Preserving wild plants ex situ (meaning “off site”) serves as an insurance policy against extinction—an important part of a worldwide plant conservation effort.

Read more about Rhoda’s collection trip with four other curators on our Tumblr blog.

Click here for the full list of species we plan to add to our collections.