News and Stories

Happy National Ohio Day! From temperate deciduous forests to prairies to wetlands, the state of Ohio is comprised of a variety of landscapes and supports many important native plant populations.

In the Plant Conservation Division at the Center for Conservation of Endangered Wildlife (CREW), scientists preserve seeds, spores, and tissues of these plant species in the CryoBioBank, a liquid nitrogen storage facility. One of the collections in this Frozen Garden is the Regional Seed Bank, which was established with the help of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources in 1989, and contains seeds of state and federally endangered species native to the Tri-State area.

Due to the low temperatures of liquid nitrogen, plants stored in the CryoBioBank can remain completely frozen in time for decades to come, allowing scientists to maintain a back-up of viable plants that can be utilized if native populations are lost in the wild.

Running Buffalo Clover (Trifolium stoloniferum), one of the many species preserved in the Regional Seed Bank, was originally thought to be extinct until populations were rediscovered in 1983. In 1987, it was listed as an Endangered species, and it’s seeds were subsequently added to the Regional Seed Bank upon its establishment in the CryoBioBank at CREW.

Now, thanks to successful recovery efforts across the eastern and midwestern US, Running Buffalo Clover has officially been delisted from the Endangered Species list as of 2021, which means that it can be found thriving across Southwestern Ohio today!