[PCA] ARTICLE: One of 2017’s Most Exciting Plant Conservation Moments

[De Angelis, Patricia]

 One of 2017’s Most Exciting Plant Conservation Moments
In Atlas Obscura
By Cara Giaimo, Dec. 20, 2017

In Ontario this year, researchers propagated a rare species and released it
back into the wild.

Just outside the village of Tobermory, Ontario, in a protected area called
Bruce Peninsula National Park, there lives a small population of a tiny
plant called the Hill’s Thistle. Some are growing in sandy soil. Some are
on rocky outcroppings. All are scattered along the west side of Bruce
Peninsula—a 20-mile-wide jut of land that separates Lake Huron from the
Georgian Bay—and on nearby Manitoulin Island.

For the first few years of its life, the Hill’s Thistle is a broad rosette
of spiky leaves. After that, if things go well, it will suddenly shoot up
two feet tall and make a few small purple flowers. In other words, it’s a
pretty ordinary thistle. But the Bruce Peninsula population is special.
About 300 of the plants living in this location started their lives in a
carefully controlled research lab.

Full story:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/rare-plants-cloning-cryopreservation-university-guelph-gripp

**Note: Hill's thistle is considered rare across its range, which includes
includes Canada (Ontario), as well as the United States (Illinois, Indiana,
Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin), where it is endangered in
Indiana, a species of concern in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and a sensitive
species according to the U.S. Forest Service.
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