The future of gin is safe

The future of gin is safe, according to horticultural experts who have collected juniper seeds from across the UK to help conserve the declining tree species. Juniper berries, which take two years to mature slowly on the plant, help give the popular alcoholic drink its distinctive flavour, but the native UK species is in decline. The UK National Tree Seed Project has been set up by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, to collect seeds from juniper and other UK tree species and store them in the Millennium Seed Bank to ensure they do not vanish from the countryside. The project has "banked" 5.8 million seeds from 6,500 UK trees since May 2013, with the aim of collecting seeds from all native woody plants, and juniper is the first species to be fully collected and saved. Some 50 collections of seeds have been made from juniper trees and shrubs across Britain, including Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, Cumbria, Conwy and the Scottish Highlands. They are taken to the Millennium Seed Bank at Wakehurst, Sussex, where they are put through a rigorous process including being cleaned, dried and examined to make sure they are viable, before being stored in underground vaults at minus 20C. Juniper, which...

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