The Swedish National Gene Bank saving rare plants

Sweden can be a tough place to grow up if you’re a plant. But it means that those that survive the harsh winters and short summers tend to be hardy souls. Those qualities of endurance are worth preserving and not just for Sweden.

The Gulf Stream has helped make British winters traditionally warmer than those in many parts of northern Europe. But now global warming is disrupting it. Colder winters could be coming. And we may need to call on this precious resource of resilient fruits and berries, vegetables, trees, bulbs, roses and other plants.

Between 2002 and 2011 a remarkable project was undertaken by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences at its Alnarp campus –­ the Programme for Diversity of Cultivated Plants. POM for short.

Swedish National Gene Bank

POM  set out to identify and research many of these special plants to help create the Swedish National Gene Bank. It ended up also preserving some remarkable stories of plants rescued or cherished and passed with love from generation to generation. Researchers collected only plants that originated in Sweden or that had been grown there since 1940, 1950, or 1960 – depending on the plant species.

Several hundred volunteer field assistants were trained to collect thousands of plant samples. The rose stream of this project is a good illustration of just how much work this entailed. First there was the research of the botanical and horticultural literature.

Statue of Carl Linnaeus in Uppsala. Image: Martin Stott

Before the Swedish botanist Linnaeus formalised binomial nomenclature – the modern system of plant taxonomy – plants could have very complex names. So, for instance, Caspard Bauhin, writing in 1623, called the dog rose, Rosa canina, ‘Rosa sylvestris vulgaris, flore odorato incarnato’. Rudbeck, who created the botanical garden at Uppsala that Linnaeus later took over, recorded at least 25 different roses there between 1658 and his death in 1702. He called it ‘Rosa alba sylvestris’. Cultivar names, like ‘Old Blush’, began to be used only in the early 19th century.

Other valuable sources of information included old herbaria – collections of dried and pressed plants. In Sweden there are several significant herbaria, mainly in the oldest universities. Perhaps the most important historical reference resource was old nursery catalogues. Researcher Irene Nettelbrants helped POM build a database of more than 60,000 roses from these catalogues and other literature.

Antique rose shows

With the research phase done it was time to collect. For roses one of the most successful methods for building the inventory was to hold “antique rose shows”. Nearly 250 were arranged around the country. Rose growers brought their blooms to be identified (often with old garden drawings, ancient pencilled plant lists and faded sepia family photos as well). Usually, researchers could name the rose, but where they could not it was collected for further study.

Sometimes the researchers found the best roses had spread – neighbours had taken cuttings over the years. Or families had taken cuttings themselves when they moved house. And so clusters of a unique rose might be found in one area.

One rose, for example, was given the name ‘Aldal’ after the coastal community where it was discovered in three gardens – its original name lost in the fog of history. A Bourbon rose, it probably arrived in Sweden some time before 1910.

Left: The Pio family in Aldal in 1915. Claus Möller’s great-grandfather Frantz Pio is standing in the back row with a light hat. Photographer unknown. Right: Aldal’ in the POMS trial field at Fredriksdal, Helsingborg.

Rose rescue

POM found a particularly magnificent example on a property built and still owned by a Danish family, the Møllers. Claus Christian Møller showed them an old black and white photograph probably taken at the turn of the century. His great grandfather Frantz Pio (1870–1950), who built the house, stands beside the rose-covered frontage. Pio came to the area in the 1890s to organise the first mountain hiking tours there. In the photograph he is surrounded by generations of women who looked after the garden. There in widow’s garb is Frantz’s mother Olivia (1842-1920) who laid out the garden. And at the bottom of the picture in a line of children, smiling shyly at the camera, is Claus Christian’s grandmother, Nina, who continued tending it till her death in 1994.

Many of these roses were at risk – rescued from hedges, graveyards and building sites. Today they are safe – with duplicates of the POM roses planted in 17 local collections around the country, including the Garden Society of Gothenburg.[/caption]

DNA testing

DNA testing was a vital part of the programme, helping researchers compare roses that looked similar but may have had small differences simply as a result of growing in a different location or being fed and pruned differently.

Swedish botanist Lars-Åke Gustavsson, who was responsible for the rose project for roses. Image: Martin Stott

In all, the researchers studied 15,000 roses. Most were known cultivars, but 1,472 mystery roses were collected and made it to be planted in trial feeds. Of these 567 were found to be duplicates. In the end, 330 cultivars got through to the gene bank – a field at the University of Agricultural Sciences in Alnarp. This summer I got to see them. The photos are not very good because it was pouring with rain precisely for the duration of our visit, just easing as we left.

In neighbouring fields we saw kitchen plants that had also been rescued – rhubarb, onion and horse radish, as well as medicinal plants.

Saving stories

This has been a huge project. In total 2,270 plants have been collected and are now being preserved – not just in Alnarp but across 30 other sites in Sweden. Now the team are trying to get some of the plants reintroduced to the market to help guarantee their future.

For the researchers this has become a labour of love. As rose project leader Lars-Åke Gustavsson tells me:

“We thought our task was to find heritage plants and build a genetic resource bank. But this became much more than that. We also discovered amazing families who had lovingly preserved these plants from generation to generation, often treating them like rare family heirlooms. Their stories have made this journey extra special.”

‘Bastunäs’ ­– rhubarb grown at the  at the University of Agricultural Sciences in Alnarp. Rhubarb came to Sweden during the latter half of the 19th century, first as a medicinal plant. But with the help of English recipe books the Swedes were eventually converted to its value as a kitchen vegetable.