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Cienfuegos Botanical Garden (JBC) will present the results of two important investigations during the III Congress of the Network of Botanical Gardens of the Caribbean and Central America, based in the Bahamas from the 14th to the 18th of this month.
During the meeting, also called “Botanical Bridges”, experts from several countries will exchange experiences and knowledge, while sharing innovative ideas to face the common challenges of the arboretums of the region and the institutes associated with them.
Leosveli Vasallo Rodriguez, director of Cienfuegos Botanical Garden (JBC), declared to Cuban News Agency that one of the studies is related to the contributions of the ship Utowana to the development of the collection of living plants for the garden, in addition to its contribution to the rest of the herbaria of the Caribbean area.
According to research carried out previously at the JBC, the ship completed five expeditions around the globe in the years 1925 and 1928, which favored the entry of some 275 species of exotic plants from the tropical ring of the world and those that still remain. about 160 varieties.
From Asia, the Mediterranean and Africa to the Mexican Pacific, in addition to states such as Honduras, Haiti, Santo Domingo and Puerto Rico, the Utowana transported the experts in charge of collecting the trees that they would later introduce in Cienfuegos.
Vasallo Rodríguez commented that the second work to be shared at the event deals with the conservation work carried out by the orchard specialists in the last three years.
He affirmed that they will share the results of projects financed by the National Fund for the Environment and the Botanical Garden International Conservation, the latter entitled Conservation of threatened endemic species of the Cienfuegos territory, such as the country’s walnut tree ─Juglans jamaicensis─ and the spiny pinion ─Erythrina elevae─.
He said that these two genera have already been cultivated in nurseries and then taken to the natural environment, as well as to other Cuban institutions to increase forest cover.
Founded in 1901 as the Soledad Experimental Station of Harvard University, the JBC was declared a National Monument in 1989 and in 2005 it received the National Conservation Award, granted by the National Office of Heritage and Historic Sites, for its important role in rescuing endangered plants.
Panama City hosted the first Botanical Bridges congress in 2016, while the second was held in Cuba in 2018, and both meetings laid the foundations for the formation of the aforementioned Network, whose primary purpose is to promote collaboration between the experts of said entities.
