SF Gate: The race to save seeds of California's disappearing Joshua tree
In a small room tucked into the corner of the Mojave Desert Land Trust’s headquarters in Joshua Tree, three nondescript white refrigerators hold the future fate of the desert landscape.
The refrigerators are packed wall-to-wall with millions of seeds, sorted by species and collection date and stored in a haphazard assortment of glass Gerber baby food containers and pickle jars. Altogether, the stuffed shelves of the refrigerators hold over 6 million seeds collected so far through the land trust’s Mojave Desert Seed Bank, part of a pivotal race to save the desert ecosystem from climate change by collecting seeds from thousands of desert plant species.