In the entrance of the Millennium Seed Bank, in the southwest of England, there is a wall filled with seeds. The wall is divided into units, each of which displays a single species mounted on rods and arranged in artful compositions. Furry Turkish hazel seeds swirl into a tower evocative of a three-tiered wedding cake. Smooth, dot-like sea beans form a minimalist grid. The world’s largest seed — of the coco de mer, whose form resembles the female sex — stands upright on its own, like a sculpture. The seeds could have been left in a pile. Instead, the intricate displays suggest an institutional desire to impose order on nature. A recorded voice announces that below my feet are stored more than two billion seeds from almost forty thousand species. In the Millennium Seed Bank, the most biodiverse place in the world, I do not see a single living plant.
In the 1970s, thousands of seed banks emerged just as pesticides, industrial farming, and climate change began to threaten biodiversity. Some of these banks are nothing more than a fridge, or earthenware jars lined up on a shelf. The most famous is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Nicknamed the Doomsday Vault, the Svalbard seed bank is located on a Norwegian island in the Arctic Circle, as far north as one can fly on a commercial plane. A wedge of concrete juts out of the snowy landscape, an oddly grandiose entrance for a flood-, bomb-, and radiation-proof institution closed to the public. This dramatic vault takes up so much space in the news, I almost missed the fact that the world’s largest seed bank is located not in Norway but in Sussex, two hours away from where I live, and is open all year.
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