Ten million is a nice round number — all those lovely zeros! It seems like a huge number, too, but in some contexts it really isn’t.
Consider the Native Plant Trust, the unusual Massachusetts organization working to save or re-establish New England’s native plants amid the onslaught of invasive plants and pests, development and climate change. Part of its work involves collecting and saving seeds of rare New England plants so they can be distributed as necessary, especially if a disaster like a wildfire threatens to wipe out a small remaining population.
The trust said that as of November 2025, it has banked “over ten million seeds” from almost 500 plant groups, or taxa. Awesome, right? Certainly, but on the other hand, that’s an average of 20,000 seeds per group and, as any gardener knows, many seeds don’t germinate or live to adulthood.
So on average, it’s possible to actually plant and grow fewer, maybe far fewer, than 20,000 plants per group, even if the seed bank gets emptied. If you’re trying to re-establish a plant that is struggling because of climate change, habitat loss, acidic soils or storms and fires, this could be the absolute minimum for a viable population, or even below the minimum.
Hence the push to keep expanding. The group recently got a $1.5 million request from an anonymous donor to continue the seed-banking, along with other work to save native plants in the region.
The group also has folks monitoring populations of rare plants in every county in New England, and documents the condition of what it says are 3,300 populations of the region’s 389 rare plants. It also has digitized 5,795 specimens in its herbarium collection collected between the early nineteenth century and the late twentieth century, creating a valuable study tool.
As for those seeds, they are collected from the field by botanists or trained amateurs from plants growing not just in New England but in specific states or counties or ecosystems. That specificity is designed to boost their chances of success if they get replanted there. Seeds bought through a national company like Burpee might have been grown in other parts of the country, so although they have the correct genes for the species, they might lack the correct epigenetics, the experiences that can alter how genes turn on and off.
Collected seeds get dried into a dormant state, then placed in foil packs with suitable data attached and stored in a minus-20 degree Celsius freezer, waiting for the day they’ll be returned to the earth.
You can buy some of these seeds yourself: the market opens again in the spring. Check the Native Plant Trust website at www.nativeplanttrust.org,
If you’re familiar with the Native Plant Trust, it’s probably from the associated Garden in the Woods in Framingham, Mass. That botanic garden showcasing New England native plants in a natural setting has classes and events and sells plants, aside from being fun to visit.
Incidentally, the Trust generally defines native plants as those growing in a certain place when Europeans arrived, but admits that the term, like “invasive plant,” is hard to pin down since the Abenaki and other groups did their own planting, breeding and ecosystem altering, although at nowhere near the level we’ve been doing since.
In the meantime, don’t plant species that are a problem. The state has a good list of invasive plants to avoid; go to www.agriculture.nh.gov and search for “invasive plants.”