Denver Botanic Garden scientists are keeping tabs on how climate will change Colorado’s flora
They’re also saving seeds in preparation for a worst-case scenario.
In 2007, the Bureau of Land Management approached the Denver Botanic Gardens with a concern. Sclerocactus glaucus, a small, round cactus that sprouts hot-pink flowers, had been on the endangered species list since 1979. The government needed to make sure the little species didn’t go extinct as oil-and-gas development and rampant plant-poaching threatened its livelihood.
So Michelle DePrenger-Levin, a DBG researcher, set out to find the species and study it for the long term. Every year, she takes a trip across the state to check in on thousands of individual plants that she’s tagged and tracked since her project began. Her work, in addition to a headcount orchestrated by the BLM, found that the spiky globes were doing better than expected.