"Since the Seeds of Success Program started, over 120 collections have been made in Alaska, not including over 40 collections this past season not yet counted," said Paul Krabacher, of the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management office in Anchorage.

The collection of seeds of plants native to Alaska is funded by Kew Gardens in a partnership agreement with the BLM, Krabacher said. While the actual collection in the past has been done by BLM employees, that federal agency now has an agreement with the Alaska Natural Heritage Program, which did the lion's share of the collecting this year, he said.

For the 2010 collection, mostly in late August or early September, the BLM also anticipates getting some intern seed collectors from the Chicago Botanical Gardens, Krabacher said. Each collection includes some 20,000 seeds, of which Kew Gardens returns some 10,000 seeds for storage in a national seed collection. The Alaska seeds returned are deposited in a seed bank in Pullman, Wash., he said.

Kew Gardens, formally known as the Royal Botanic Gardens, is renown for cultivating the world's largest collection of living plants, more than 30,000 varieties in all, while the herbarium, the largest in the world, has over 7 million preserved plant specimens.

In an announcement Oct. 16 from Washington, D.C., BLM Director Bob Abbey congratulated Kew Gardens for its milestone accomplishment of collecting, banking and conserving 10 percent of the world's wild plant species. The BLM has, for nearly a decade, been a partner with Kew's Millennium Seed Bank Program in its native seed collection effort.

The BLM's Seeds of Success Program has played a large role in Kew's ability to meet its goal on time and under budget, Abbey said. This nationwide seed-collecting network of teams has made over 8,500 wild land native seed collections to support the Native Plant Materials Development Program and simultaneously seed banked over 10 percent of U.S. flora for future generations, he said.

"Not only is BLM leading a national effort to develop diversity and quantity in native plant materials for restoration and rehabilitation projects, but the agency is also shaping global conservation in the face of today's environmental challenges," Abbey said in a written statement.

The BLM partners in its Seeds of Success program include Chicago Botanic Garden, Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, North Carolina Botanical Garden, new England Wild Flower Society, new York city Department of Parks and Recreation-Greenbelt Native Plant center, and Zoological Society of San Diego.

Seeds collected are stored I the U.S. and England for long-term conservation, as well as short-term storage for the distribution of seeds to any researcher interested in working with native seed.