Welcome to the website of the Rare Trees Association (Formerly The Rare Trees Trust).

The mission of the Rare Trees Association is the protection, conservation and propagation of rare and endangered plants in Israel and the Middle East, especially plants with medicinal properties and plants on "red" lists.

The loss of plant varieties and whole plant species is often the result of road building, constuction of new neighborhoods or careless and inappropriate agriculture. Plant populations, like animal populations, can drop below the point of healthy diversity or be depleted to the point where the species cannot replenish its numbers and goes into irreversible decline. But plant species are much easier to save than endangered wild life. Plants may be propagated from seeds, cuttings or tissue culture. Seeds can be kept for many years until conditions are right for replanting.

With care and foresight it is often possible to return rare and endangered plants to their native range after the bulldozers have stopped working and the projects which put the plants in danger are completed. Meanwhile individual plants and collections of rare plants can be kept safe in areas reserved especially for them. This is what the Rare Trees Association is doing.

The Rare Trees Association (RTA) is an amuta/non profit organization registered in Israel (Amuta 580483543) and in the United States (Member 80415 of the Society for Non-Profit Organizations and Charities)

The RTA’s current mission includes cooperative work with Hadasah Hospital, MERC/AID and the International Arid Lands Consortium on the preservation of rare and endangered plants.