Global Survey of Ex situ Maple Collections

The Red List of Maples, published in 2009, called for action to ensure that the 26 taxa listed in the report as Critically Endangered or Endangered were conserved. The first stage of this action is to establish which of these very threatened taxa are held in ex situ collections around the world by carrying out a global survey.

The survey, published in 2010, identified 4,405 maple records from 228 institutions in 37 countries. However, only 223 ex situ records representing just 16 of the most threatened maples were located. This means that many of the Critically Endangered or Endangered taxa are currently not known to cultivation and therefore at great risk of extinction if threats that they are facing in the wild are not addressed. The report concludes by making a call for further information to fill gaps in our knowledge of collections.