Jacob Martin - Plant hunter and conservationist

Jacob Martin - Horticultural & Greenhouse Manager, Mercer Arboretum & Botanic Gardens, will speak to the Lake Houston Gardeners at their regular monthly meeting about his seed collecting trips, and preserving plants through seed collections. The meeting will be at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in Kingwood, starting at 6:30 p.m. with social time.

About Jacob

Jacob Martin is part of a new breed of plant hunter who works to preserve rare and unusual plants. He often heads into the wild to collect seeds from edibles and plants found in jungles, forests, deserts, prairies, and coastal regions. This passion for wild plants has inspired him to take at least eight seed-collecting trips to areas including Ecuador, Costa Rica, Mexico and West Texas.

Amazon Coral Tree

“Botanic gardens trade a lot of rare plants with each other for backups," says Jacob Martin. He states that the first thing usually done when they receive a rare plant is to make a backup for the gardens and then share backups with other botanic gardens so the plant is never lost.

Memorable finds include two popular species, Amazon coral tree (Erythrina amazonica), a tree from Ecuador dripping with hot pink, pointed blooms, and a wild papaya tree (Vasconcellea cauliflora) in Costa Rica. Both are now growing in Mercer's Tropical Garden.“We grow a lot from seed so it acclimates to our region as it grows,” he says. 

Wild Papaya Tree

Martin also seeks rare plants from commercial growers like Plant Delights and Far Reaches Farm, businesses that work directly with botanists and botanical gardens to sustainably collect seeds in the field.

“There are a few nurseries around the country that sell rare plants, and they do quite a lot of wild collecting,” says Martin. “If the gardens need something, someone with seed can usually be found.”

Martin, through Mercer. also works with the Global Consortium for Oak. Oaks (genus Quercus) are valuable keystone species found in a wide range of habitats around the world. Oaks perform critical ecosystem functions and provide food and habitat for myriad animals. Botanic Gardens have become key repositories for living trees where native habitats are declining or threatened.