Importance of native seeds

A seed is much more than the origin of a plant, flower or food. A seed is the beginning of life and is capable of completely restoring degraded soil to the point of turning it into a living space capable of providing ecosystem services. These seeds can be used in the most diverse places, as it offers a varied mosaic of possibilities from railway ditches to the tree wells we see on our pavements, through gardens, abandoned urban and peri-urban spaces, vineyards, olive groves, pastures, various infrastructures. All these places, if they are degraded, can be brought to life thanks to native flowers.

In the framework of the Fleurs locales project, native seeds for a restoration project is defined as the reproductive material coming from autochthonous flora which is harvested as close as possible to the intervention area and maintains the phenotypic and genotypic characteristics of the wild populations in the area.

In that sense, it is important to note that autochthonous is not a synonym of native, as some species can be autochthonous to an area but also show human-selected characteristics (for example, for gardening purposes) or traits from other biogeographical areas (for example, for plants having a very wide distribution). Native is neither a synonym of local, as our landscapes hold a significant number of introduced species from other biogeographical areas.

A seed is much more than the origin of a plant, flower or food. A seed is the beginning of life and is capable of completely restoring degraded soil to the point of turning it into a living space capable of providing ecosystem services. These seeds can be used in the most diverse places, as it offers a varied mosaic of possibilities from railway ditches to the tree wells we see on our pavements, through gardens, abandoned urban and peri-urban spaces, vineyards, olive groves, pastures, various infrastructures. All these places, if they are degraded, can be brought to life thanks to native flowers.

Curbing climate change

The key to recovering biodiversity with flowers is the quality of the seed, which, above all, must be native, i.e. from the place where it is going to be sown. Because this will not only allow it to have a high rate of success in implantation, but also to create a strong ecosystem that will survive and self-perpetuate. This is the complex but exciting work of the “Fleurs locales” project.

Biodiversity loss is one of today’s major problems, accelerated by climate change, and the “Local Flowers” project aims to propose valid actions to halt this decline in agro-ecosystems in the SUDOE region..