Freezing vaults guard Earth's flora

Largest seed is the size of two coconuts
The futuristic facility, with its low-slung steel and glass structure over the vaults, is seen by scientists as an insurance policy against nature and human folly. It is a quiet place, where young scientists in white smocks spend hours cleaning seeds by hand, using microscopes, scalpels, forceps, and tiny brushes. The largest is the double coconut seed, almost as big as two coconuts; smallest is the Venus looking glass — with more than a million seeds fitting into a small canister.

Before depositing the seeds in the vaults, lab workers don floor-length parkas.

Even then, the temperature is so low that bodies start losing core heat in 15 minutes. So elaborate safety systems are in place in case anyone is trapped in a vault; an AP photographer inadvertently tripped a series of ringing alarms when he left the vault while a worker remained inside.

Invaluable as climate change accelerates
Scientists call the Millennium effort invaluable as climate change accelerates.

"The potential value of this project is almost unfathomable," said David Astley, head of the Genetics Resources Unit at the University of Warwick in England, who corroborated the Millennium Projects claim to be the world's most diverse seed bank.

"If you look at the way the world is going, it's inevitable that genetic material will be lost," said Astley, who is not connected to the project. "The big fear is that, if global warming comes sooner rather than later, it may be too late to conserve the material."

Scientists here are also developing new ways to germinate endangered species, including some like the South African faucaria that are down to a single population of plants in the wild.

"We don't know that they are useful for anything," Smith said, "but we don't know that they aren't useful either."

Possible medical use
The same could be said of the roughly 80 percent of species here that have not yet been screened for possible medical use.

"Twenty years ago we didn't know the rosy periwinkle from Madagascar would reduce childhood leukemia to the extent that it has," said Smith.

"So who knows what we have in the bank? Our worry is that we're going to lose those in the wild before we even have a chance. So putting them in the seed bank is the most logical first step."

Already, a handful of species collected here have vanished in the wild as habitat is destroyed. Scientists believe these could be reintroduced in the next few centuries. Some seeds, they believe, may last one thousand years under ideal conditions.

Researchers here have already been able to germinate seeds that are more than 200 years old, bringing to life a "pin cushion flower" — known as the leucospermum — from seeds dating back to 1803.

The seeds tell the story of lost empire — they were first collected by a Dutch merchant trading in South Africa, but he was intercepted on his return voyage by a British privateer because Britain was at war with the Dutch at the time.

The seeds were taken from the Dutchman, who was imprisoned in the Tower of London, and were eventually discovered in the National Archives and given to the seed bank.

Scientists expected germination attempts to fail, but were pleasantly surprised when they were able to grow the flowering plant at the Millennium Seed Bank, where it can sometimes be seen in the greenhouse.

They take this as a hopeful sign that other seeds can lay dormant for hundreds of years and be brought back to life.

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