Two visiting British horticultural experts from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London, England said they were horrified by the level of invasive plant species on the Island.

"The invasives are worse than any place I have ever visited," said Martin Hamilton, programme co-ordinator of the UK Overseas Territories Programme at Kew Gardens. "Bermuda is quite far ahead in a lot of the conservation activities, but the threat that invasive species impose is compounding the conservation effort."

Mr. Hamilton and Dr. Daisy Dent from the Kew Herbarium and the Millennium Seed Bank were in Bermuda to conduct research and to give lectures and workshops about preserving threatened and endangered species in Bermuda.

"Bermuda's natural open forest canopy has allowed for invasive species to take over the eco-system," said Mr. Hamilton. "In many of the areas we have visited in Bermuda, so far, we have seen monocultures of Brazilian pepper or Surinam cherry that create impenetrable thickets and basically shade out all of the native and endemic plants."

He said that when conservationists clear an area and plant endemic and native plants it takes a great deal of effort and resources to keep the invasive species from taking over again. He said a good example of this was on Nonsuch Island.

"Reintroduction work has been very successful," he said. "But we were just hearing this morning that somewhere in the neighbourhood of half a million to a million Brazilian pepper seedlings are removed there each year. That is just on Nonsuch, a two-acre island."

Yellow wood Zanthoxylum flavum was one threatened species of interest to the horticulturists, because it is also struggling for survival in the Caribbean and Florida.

"Because of its preferred habitat, it is being pushed out mainly through development opportunities," said Mr. Hamilton. "So the population here in Bermuda becomes more and more important. As those plants that are native to a wider area get slowly pushed away into smaller refuges, basically what happens is you begin to lose genetic diversity.

"If you lose the population here in Bermuda, its extended occurrence worldwide gets lessened to a great degree. Native plants that go extinct on Bermuda have quite an impact on the world population."

While in Bermuda, Mr. Hamilton and Dr. Dent have been looking at endemic plant collections on the Island.

"Last week we visited the nursery at Tulo Valley," he said. "We met with the propagators and the people who look after the collections. We have been addressing gaps in the plant collections, and how to go about filling those gaps. We are looking at the best ways to increase the numbers in these collections so they can be reintroduced.

"Last week we ran a workshop in propagation techniques at Tulo Valley. It was very well attended. We did some hands-on work in the afternoon in the nursery with yellow wood seeds."

Dr. Dent said Bermudians are propagating native and endemic seedlings, but have trouble placing them in the outdoors.

"People are producing seedlings, but then they need to go somewhere," Dr. Dent said. "There needs to be a need for them to be planted."

Mr. Hamilton said the Bermudian community has a big role to play in preserving threatened species for future generations.

"There is people's private gardens where native plants can be put back into the native environment and then maintained," he said. "There is also huge opportunity for all this green space, public parks, golf courses, developments and private gardens to put these natives in. Then these plants will get maintained because it is part of your aesthetically pleasing area around your home. The plants are there, it is just engaging the local community to get those plants in their hands."

He said it is also important for people to know how to care for native and endemics once the are replanted.

"We have these plants, but we also need the right horticulture techniques to make sure they survive once they are planted out," he said. "Part of that can be addressed at the nursery stage where the seedlings are put into the correct media that will then allow them to not be so stressed when they are planted out.

"So very general guidance notes will be developed. This is something that the Bermuda National Trust specifically asked for. For example, if you are planting cedars, you want to wait until later in the year when you have rain and it is not so hot."

While in Bermuda, Dr. Dent planned to collect seeds from around 20 endemic species of mosses and higher plants. Part of this seed collection will go towards re-planting projects here in Bermuda, while another part will be cold-stored at the Millennium Seed Bank at Kew.

"The aim of the project is to bank ten percent of the world's flora by 2010," Dr. Dent said. "The Seed Bank is focused on endemic and endangered species. When we have good quality collections here in Bermuda, they will be sent back to the seed bank in the United Kingdom."

The Millennium Seed Bank only stores seeds that have a period of dormancy.

"There have been a lot of viability studies of seeds," Dr. Dent said. "We pick seeds that can be dried and stored for a long time. Many seeds can be stored for decades, hundreds even thousands of years. They are retested every ten years to look at viability, so we can get assessments over time."

Dr. Dent has a background in forest ecology and a doctorate in tropical forest ecology from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. She conducted her doctoral field work in Malaysia and later worked on tropical forest restoration with the Centre for Tropical Forest Science in Panama.

"Because I have experience working in Panama, I work largely within the Millennium Seed Bank project in Latin America, the Caribbean and in some southern American states," she said. "Although the flora is not totally similar across all those locations, it means I am working with families that are fairly similar. I also work in plant identification back at Kew."For more information about the Millennium Seed Bank project go to www.kew.org.