Where Seeds Fall

The project „Promoting and Interconnecting Plant Biodiversity in Cities“ addresses the question of whether the wildflower populations in the city of Zurich can survive in the long term and whether gene flow occurs between the different populations.

The aim of the project is to show the public that the city air is filled with plant seeds which very quickly repopulate every free piece of ground. Nature in the city is dynamic and resistant.

We will distribute plant trays to volunteers which they fill with sterilized soil and then place somewhere in the city - in a garden, on a forecourt, in a school, on a balcony, or on a roof terrace. Then all they have to do is wait and see which plant seeds populate the open soil, sprout and begin to grow. Photos of plants growing spontaneously on their own experimental surface can be uploaded to a spatially explicit online platform. There they can compare their own spontaneous garden with that of their neighbor or of someone at the other end of the city of Zurich. Are the same plants colonizing their neighbor‘s garden? Is the seed dispersal more interesting and varied when occurring near the outskirts of the city or beside a flowery meadow than in the middle of the city?

Project participants:

Zurich-Basel Plant Science Center

Prof. Dr. Christoph Kueffer – PI, Professor for Urban Ecology, Landscape Architecture, HSR Rapperswil & Institute of Integrative Biology, Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich

Kevin Vega, doctoral student, ETH Zurich & HSR Rapperswil.

Dr. Juanita Schläpfer-Miller –  Citizen Science Project Coordinator

Zurich-Basel Plant Science Center

Graphic designer:

Tanja Hess