Body Shop Foundation Sponsors Seed Adoptions
In 2013, the Body Shop Foundation chose Pollination Canada as one of three charities that would receive a portion of the proceeds from sales of Dragon Fruit Lip Butter. Some of you supported this by voting for us on the Body Shop’s website, and buying the lip butter.
Pollination Canada, a program of Seeds of Diversity, decided to put the funds we received towards adopting seeds into the Canadian Seed Library.
Seed adoptions preserve a seed in perpetuity in our seed bank, at a cost of $250 per seed variety. By the conclusion of the campaign, we had gratefully received $9120, which allowed us to make 25 full, new seed adoptions, and complete adoptions of another 23 seed varieties that had previously been partially adopted.
That means that we have protected a total of 48 seed varieties forever!
We were so excited to be the lucky recipients of this charitable donation that we got others involved. We invited a number of people to help choose a plant variety, including the other two charities that benefitted from The Body Shop Foundation proceeds in Canada last year – Polar Bears International and Dress for Success. We also invited some of you, our members, as well as past and present board members and employees, to help choose a seed variety that you wanted to see permanently adopted. Those varieties have now been fully adopted in the library, in the names of the Body Shop Foundation, and the people who helped select them.
We also decided to focus on varieties that either need, or are helped by pollinators. To do this, we compiled a list of some of the heritage food plants that require pollinators. That means the plant needs an insect, usually a bee, to move the pollen to the necessary flower parts.
In Canada, this list includes several members of the Cucurbit family: melons, squash, zucchini, pumpkins, and cucumbers. The squash bee, in particular, has co-evolved with these plants; in fact, squash bees only feed on Cucurbit pollen and nectar.
There are also various crop plants that are self-pollinating, but which benefit greatly from bee pollination. For example, bumblebees often use “buzz pollination” or “sonication” to shake pollen out of flowers, especially those of the Solanaceae family, such as peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants. Because of this, we added some of these heirloom plants to the list. We also added other heritage varieties of some flowers and other vegetables.
All told, the donations ensured that 24 plant varieties that need an insect pollinator were protected for perpetuity, and the majority of the remaining 24 varieties are those which benefit from buzz pollination.
Thank you Body Shop Foundation, and all of you who voted and supported us!
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