The man in charge of logging each native seed in Ireland has described the project as like “Noah’s Ark” for plants – a vault for renewal after ecological disasters. Conservation ecologist Darren Reidy has been researching, gathering and banking native seeds across Ireland since his appointment in 2022. Banking the seeds of a native Irish plant is complicated – ideally you would need 10,000 seeds per species. To illustrate this, he takes out a matchbox which he said holds a single seed of all 900 native species to Ireland. "Seed banking is like a cog in that bigger wheel of conservation," says Mr Reidy.

Source: The Irish Times December 22, 2025 14:31 UTC