Seed for Thought by Jessica Dacey
Two miles from downtown Joshua Tree are three fridges containing the past and the future. These ordinary- looking white fridges with their extraordinary contents can be found in an office at the headquarters of the Mojave Desert Land Trust. A nearby table is scattered with brass sieves, paintbrushes and a microscope. Welcome to the Mojave Desert Seed Bank.
dore Payne Foundation for Wild Flowers and Native Plants, she came to Joshua Tree two years ago to build up the Trust’s nursery from scratch.
Derelict nursery buildings at the Trust’s headquarters on Highway 62 were restored, and Madena, aided by volunteers, started scouting for seeds from native plants on land that the Trust was stewarding and conWhat began with a few fishhook cactus seeds in serving across the surrounding desert. March 2016 is evolving into a visual DNA database of the Mojave Desert. Today, the fridges are filled with Since only the pure seeds can be preserved, separating 320 collections of seeds representing over 110 species, them from the tough chaff is a time consuming proincluding eight species of concern. They are now safe cess. Volunteers from around the Morongo Basin have for decades to come. spent hundreds of hours over the past year collecting seeds and painstakingly cleaning them by hand. What It’s the brainchild of the Mojave Desert Land Trust’s they are left with are just the tiny, oily, living seeds. Nursery & Seed Bank Manager, Madena Asbell. They are then stored in glass jars and officially enter Formerly the Director of Horticulture at the Theo- the seed bank fridges. 7