N e w P lant s for C o n s e r v a t i o n 1

W. CURTIS SHARP 2

Plants are the principal guardians of many resources. They usually perform this task without any assistance from man frequently in spite of man. Unfortunately, man and nature can destroy protective vegetation faster than nature alone can replace it. This results in loss of resources including soil, water, and wild life habitat. Conservation- ists have learned to select and develop plants that help diminish or prevent such losses.

The search for needed plants and devel- opment of techniques for their use concerns the Soil Conservation Service, an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture.

The agency's broad aim is to help land owners and operators use their soil and wa- ter resources efficiently and profitably. Its personnel are located throughout the United States. They provide on-site technical as- sistance to land owners who seek help in developing sound conservation programs.

They regularly recommend the use of plants that are commonly available. Suit- able plant materials are not commercially available, however, for all problems en- countered in conservation work. Therefore, the agency establishes and operates plant materials centers. The task of these centers is to make systematic studies of plants to determine their precise conservation useful- ness.

Because soil, climate, and conservation needs vary greatly throughout the country, plant materials centers are located to serve land areas having common major character- istics.

To guide their work, plant materials cen- ter personnel catalog and assign priorities to soil and water conservation problems that

t Paper presented at the 10th Annual Meeting of the Society for Economic Botany, Longwood Gardens, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. April 1969.

Plant materials specialist, United States De- partment of Agriculture Soil Conservation Ser- vice, Cape May Court House, N. J.

are peculiar to the area served. Examples of problems include eroding coastal sand dunes, man-dis~trbed areas such as road- banks and gravel pits, heavily used and com- pacted play areas, excessively acid or alka- line soils, grazing areas of low precipitation, and needs for wildlife food and cover.

The next step is to gather and compare plants that have value for solving one or more of the more critical soil and water con- servation problems. The main sources of materials are foreign plant introductions and ecotypes collected domestically.

The center then selects and increases promising plants to make materials available for more precise comparisons and to study propagation and cultural techniques.

The plants are finally tested and evalu- ated throughout their area of adaptation on representative problem sites. Those plants which show unique conservation values or which are superior to commonly used ma- terials may be given variety names and re- leased to commercial producers. When available for purchase, they are recom- mended for solving or helping solve specific conservation problems.

At present, there are 20 plant materials centers in the United States. In three dec- ades, these centers have played a major role in developing and introducing new and im- portant plant varieties. Stocks of these were turned over to commercial producers through soil conservation districts. Producers have sold over 50 million pounds of seed of im- proved conservation grasses and legumes. Similarly, millions of seedlings of new woody plant varieties have been made available commercially.

Examples of plants introduced to the commercial trade illustrate the scope of the plant materials centers' activities in the past 30 years.

'Manchar' smooth brome grass and 'Latar' orchard grass were developed with state ex- periment stations for use in the Pacific Northwest.

53

54 E C O N O M I C BOTANY

'Pensacola' bahia grass has been used on more than 5 million acres in the Southeast.

Two crown vetch varieties, 'Emerald' and 'Chemung,' are specifically adapted to erod- ible sites in the Midwest and the Northeast.

'Cardinal' autumn olive is adapted over most of the northeastern quarter of the na- tion and is used extensively as a wildlife

food plant, and for strip-mine spoil reclama- tion.

Increasing numbers of plant varieties will no doubt continue to be important to the efficient and profitable management of land. Today's pressures on natural resources sug- gest an intensified search for additional con- servation help from the plant world.