I have been following this exchange with great interest on a newly-purchased smartphone during breaks in a lengthy jury service. Thank you all for entertaining me! I will resist ponderous pronouncements about the ephemeral nature of all human endeavor -- individual or institutional -- and just note that even Kew is only a few hundred years old. How many plants from the 1789 Hortus Kewensis are growing there today? Of course our work as individuals is even more transitory than an institution like Kew or Kirstenbosch, and our motives more suspect, or at least opaque. And scattering a plant around some gardens is no substitute for preserving natural breeding populations. Since that last goal is simply unrealistic in many (almost all?) cases, what we might call the distributed model of ex situ plant conservation that has been so eloquently defended here has to be considered the best chance for the survival of endangered and threatened species in any form at all. I suspect that funding/staffing shortfalls as much as an ivory tower mentality are to blame, but perhaps I am too charitable. Off to contemplate my own mortality, Max Withers Oakland CA