1. The Great Plant Hunt About Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank

2. Variety of seeds Seeds come in all shapes, sizes and colours

3. Oval seeds There are oval seeds,

4. spiky seeds,

5. The MSB and even curly seeds.

6. The MSB This is an exhibition in the visitors area inside the Millennium Seed Bank.

7. Plant hunting Plant Hunters all over the world go out collecting seeds in the field to send back to the Millennium Seed Bank.

8. Plant hunting Plant Hunters also press specimens of the plants they’ve collected seed from.

9. Annatto fruits Here’s some seed collected in the field. These are annatto fruits with red seeds. These seeds are used to make colours for margarine, lipstick and cheese.

10. Here’s some Plant Hunters collecting seed in Burkino Faso, Africa. Can you see one of them collecting seed right up at the top of the tree?

11. This Plant Hunter is putting the seed into a seed collecting bag made of cloth.

12. Bags of seed Here’s lots of collecting bags. You can see lots of different seeds in them.

13. Seed cleaning If the seeds have come from inside juicy fruits, they may need to be washed to remove the fruit flesh.

14. Seeds arriving at the MSB Back at the Millennium Seed Bank, pressed and dried plants come in from everywhere in the world, by post.

15. Mounting a pressed plant Here you can see a pressed plant being mounted to create a ‘herbarium specimen’ or ‘herbarium voucher’ - a record of that plant.

16. Drying seed The seeds that come into the Millennium Seed Bank are first dried…

17. Cleaning seed …and then cleaned, using sieves

18. Seed sieves Here’s a set of sieves that are used in the cleaning process

19. Processing seed This scientist is separating seeds from their fruits.

20. Processing seed These seeds are ready for X-raying and then storage.

21. X-ray of a seed This is an X-ray of some seeds

22. And here are seeds in storage jars ready for long term storage (banking).

23. Seed storage More seeds ready for banking!

24. Seed storage Many types of seed are best stored in the Seed Bank’s freezer where the temperature is -20°C

25. MSB labs This is one of the Millennium Seed Bank’s research labs.

26. Seed research This is where research scientists do experiments on what conditions seeds need to germinate.

27. Germinating seed And here, a scientist is testing which temperature is best for seed germination using a temperature gradient plate.

28. Germinating seed This scientist is photographing some germinated seed.

29. Germinating seed These seeds are being tested for ‘viability’, meaning whether or not they will still grow after being stored for a while.

30. The billionth seed! Dr Paul Smith holds up the billionth seed to be banked into the Millennium Seed Bank (April 2007)

31. The billionth seed! The billionth seed was from an African bamboo: Oxytenanthera abyssinica.