Saving Spring: Growing Rare and Endangered Magnolias

An emblem of spring, magnolias are celebrated for their beautiful white and pink flowers that bloom early in the season. While common in home landscapes, half of all magnolia species are threatened with extinction in the wild. They are found around the globe, and are mainly threatened by logging activity as well as habitat loss…

Plant Profile: Persimmon

The American persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) is a Missouri-native tree known for its edible fruit and cultural connections.

The Plants of Encanto

Walt Disney Animation Studios’ newest feature film, Encanto, is not a movie about plants. But plants are far more than background greenery in this story. They play an important role as the plot unfolds, and take center stage in one of the more lively musical numbers. Even the plants that are in the background serve…

The Botanist Behind Encanto’s Plants

Walt Disney Animation Studios goes to great lengths to build true-to-life environments as the settings for their films. For the movie Encanto they enlisted the help of the Colombian Cultural Trust. This group of experts consulted with the filmmakers on subjects such as architecture, clothing, indigenous culture, food, and of course plants. The botanist who…

Saving the Seeds of an Endangered Christmas Tree

Two years after wild-collected Christmas tree seeds made their way from the Appalachian Mountains to St. Louis, our researchers are learning more about the challenges ahead when it comes to conserving the Fraser fir.

Trees for Lemurs and Lemurs for Trees

The Missouri Botanical Garden: the clue is in the name, really! We love plants – everything about them: we love unpacking their evolutionary relationships, we love to investigate how they mold themselves to their environments, we love discovering how best to propagate and grow them. But, most of all, we love simply reveling in their life-enhancing…

Rare Tree Reveals First Flower

One of the world’s rarest trees, Karomia gigas, is flowering in the greenhouses of the Missouri Botanical Garden for the first time.

Take Our Tree ID Quiz

These thorny questions may leaf you feeling nuts, but see if you can conquer these ten questions about trees.

White Redbud Has History at the Garden

Missouri’s native trees put on quite a show in spring, led by the fuchsia flush of the Eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis). This understory tree can be found in parks, home landscapes, and along roadsides throughout the state. The dense clusters of tiny pink blooms are a reminder that warmer weather and longer days have finally…