As you may or may not know, my Mom is a plant scientist. She is also an extreme conservationist. By extreme, I mean she is a save-plants-from-extinction kind of extreme conservationist. She is pretty awesome.
Ten plus years ago, she received a request from the government of Bermuda to help them save a fern. There were only 3 plants left in the world. So she traveled there to get samples and brought them back to do her magic. I think she has an enchanted blender & beaker collection in her lab where she mixes and stirs and sprinkles fairy dust. Then in a poof of smoke, hundreds of baby plantlets appear in petri dishes. After a little growing time, she returns them to the wild. Actually, a lot of growing time because these ferns are finicky. Pretty awesome, right?
These baby fern plantlets have to be hand carried back to Bermuda to be handed off to their government officials who then give them more growing time before reintroducing them to their native habitat. Lucky for them, I needed to be one of those hand carriers this time. So, we hopped on a plane with bags of petri dishes filled with baby fern plantlets.
This is Kim opening her haul of about 60,000 baby fern plantlets. She works at the Ministry of the Environment, aka the Ministry of Magic. (I like to think I was brought along for comic relief. Scientists can be a tad on the serious side.)
We then wandered through Kim’s greenhouse & gardens. Excellent photo ops for someone like me who adores floral photography! So enjoy these and I will be back in a few days with lots more photos of my amazing trip to Bermuda.
yarnchick 
What a beautiful job your mom does! I’m in love! You tell her she’s a super hero! Thanks for sharing this, and I’m glad you got to visit Bermuda! The perks of being a super hero sidekick, eh? =}
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What a beautiful job your mom does! I’m in love! You tell her she’s a super hero! Thanks for sharing this, I’m glad you got to visit Bermuda. The perks of being a super hero sidekick, eh? =}
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Ah, but yes, the perks were fabulous! I will pass your description of her on ~ she will get a kick out of it 🙂
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I bet you had a great time. But what about us? Weren’t there some plants over here that your mom was going to save????
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She was! She was! She lost her funding at the zoo for her South Africa trip 😦 She still has some of the plants growing in her lab, but they will only be sent back alone…sadly no special trip. I still have every intention of taking a vacation to Capetown on my own though…I just have to really save some serious money to make it happen. Hope you are well, I’ve missed you and blogging for many months now but I’m trying to focus on making more of an effort. Hugs xox
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so so so awesome!!!
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I did not know that about your mom. What a way cool job! And how awesome for you to get to escort baby fern plantlets to their new home. The photos are beautiful. I especially like the bird of paradise.
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Ah, but if we only had enough sunshine out here in the great plains to make mine bloom like that…those are one of my all time favorite flowers
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Wouldn’t that be amazing?!
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