ST. LOUIS — We all come from somewhere — and irises, tulips, cherries and MoBot’s visiting scholars this summer all came from Tajikistan.
The visit marked the start of a collaboration between the Missouri Botanical Garden, the Kulob Botanical Garden and a nonprofit organization, Gangji Tabiat, to protect hundreds of plants that grow in Tajikistan — and nowhere else.
Together, the groups will aim to discover new plant species in Tajikistan and prevent extinction to at-risk, high-value trees: the wild relatives to many popular fruit and nut trees.
The three visitors are more than collaborators — they are siblings, and children of the man who founded the Kulob Botanical Garden in Tajikistan.
“When our father passed away, we wanted to continue his legacy,” said Manizka Boboeva, program officer of Gangi Tabiat. The trio visited MoBot in June.
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When her father would ask her for help translating his work into English, Manizka began to notice the detail with which her father saw the natural world — specifically, the plants.
“We look at the same things, but we see them in different ways,” she said. Manizka left her career in managing international organizations to start a non-profit called Gangi Tabiat, meaning “treasures of nature,” in 2008.
She was joined by her brother, Jovidon Boboev, an engineer by training who is now the director of Gangi Tabiat. Their goal for the organization is to acquire grant money for research projects at the botanical garden — the only research institution in South Tajikistan.
Their oldest brother, Mariyo Boboev, took over as the director of the Kulob Botanical Garden when their father passed away, after years of studying botany alongside him.
A man of few words, Mariyo let his siblings boast about his botanical achievements, from discovering a new species of ranunculus that he plans to publish by the end of 2024, to providing his expertise as a commission member of the International Conservation of Global Nature — a group that decides what organisms are prioritized for conservation efforts around the world.
Central Asia is a center of diversity for many popular fruit and nut trees, such as cherries, plums, apricots, almonds, walnuts, pomegranates and apples. It is also the origin of all cultivated tulips, said Andrew Wyatt, senior vice president for horticulture and living collections at MoBot.
Conservation efforts in Tajikistan are challenging. Overgrazing by animals typically effects soil health, but it also makes it hard to maintain tree populations. Rebecca Sucher, senior manager for living collections at MoBot, said cows and goats eat tree saplings, making replenishing populations, especially endangered or at-risk species, difficult. She said some saplings can be protected by wire mesh to deter the animals, but this protection is labor-intensive and inefficient across acres of land.
“Irises and tulips are overharvested for selling,” Manizka Boboeva said. “And some people are collecting medicinal plants, but the seeds are not upkept properly.”
Many of these species are considered rare, and some are endangered, which is what this collaboration aims to address. So far, the Kulob Botanical Garden and Gangi Tabiat have planted nearly 80 acres of new orchards of rare and endangered trees in South Tajikstan.
The third most mountainous country in the world, Tajikistan is a hotspot for biodiversity. It is inhabited by an estimated 4,300 species of vascular plants. About 1,400 of these are endemic, which means they do not grow anywhere else, including four species of irises and five species of tulips. And there could be more.
“I bet there is a lot more to discover” Wyatt said. Understanding the variety of species in this region will allow scientists to update the official flora of Tajikistan, but first, they must go into the field to make collections, and hunt for undescribed species.
Collection trips in Tajikistan typically start by driving about an hour away from the nearest town or city, followed by a day or two of hiking to get to a collection site, and then camping until all collections are made — a “true expedition”, Wyatt called it.
MoBot’s role is to help with collections, seed storage and to optimize greenhouse conditions for growing the rare and endangered plants.
“We’re relying on that exchange, that two-way aspect of this collaboration,” Wyatt said. For MoBot, this means the opportunity to include plants from Tajikistan in the Garden’s living collections. Irises take seven years to flower when they are grown from seed — but the wait should be worth it for şüŔęĘÓƵ residents.
Visitors to MoBot may start to see other plants from Tajikistan appearing in flower beds as soon as next year, Sucher said.
“The collections in the garden are infinitely connected to our scientific work, to projects like this,” Wyatt said.