To Collect Native Seeds, Ugandan Botanists Are Climbing Forest Giants

The mvule (Milicia excelsa) is a giant of a tree, up to 50 meters (165 feet) tall, with a trunk 6 m (20 ft) around. To collect seeds from such a large tree, climbers work in a team of three, explains Sebastain Walaita, curator at the Tooro Botanical Gardens in Uganda.

Spacing themselves out evenly around the trunk they climb in tandem upwards using a system of ropes, harnesses and spurs. Once in the crown, the climbers separate, moving along the branches and stashing the mature seeds into their collection bags before descending back to the ground.

Walaita first learned high tree climbing for seed collection more than 25 years ago at a course organized by the Danish nonprofit DANIDA Forest Seed Center and has been honing his skills ever since. Over the years, he has trained a cadre of Ugandan botanists at Tooro, who can now safely collect seeds from even the most difficult trees, he says, improving their ability to propagate native species.