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A Living History of Succulent Plant Introductions
The International Succulent Introductions (ISI) program has played an important role in the cultivation, study, and conservation of cacti and other succulent plants for more than six decades. Established in 1958, as the International Succulent Institute, the program was created to propagate and distribute new and rare succulent plants to collectors, nurseries, botanical gardens, and other institutions.
The program has had a long-standing association with The Huntington. In 1989, The Huntington adopted the ISI program, bringing the program under its stewardship and continuing its mission of making unusual and significant succulent plants available to the horticultural community. The yearly ISI listing continues to be published in the Cactus and Succulent Journal, Volume 2, each year, providing detailed information about the plants, their origins, and their significance.
ISI has become particularly important as a means of conserving and distributing plants that may be rare or difficult to obtain in cultivation. In keeping with sound conservation practices, the program does not sell field-collected plants. Instead, plants offered through ISI are propagated under nursery conditions from seedlings, cuttings, grafts, and, more recently, tissue-cultured material.
The Huntington has maintained an extensive online archive of these introductions, including catalogs from recent decades and a master list of corrections to previous offerings.
Explore the ISI Archives
The CSSA is pleased to make the history of ISI more accessible to researchers, collectors, horticulturists, and anyone interested in succulent plants. We are in the process of making the complete collection of International Succulent Introductions available here.
Once the archive is complete, visitors will be able to view, download, and print individual ISI introductions from previous Cactus and Succulent Journals, creating a valuable historical resource documenting more than 60 years of succulent plant introductions.
The archive will provide an opportunity to explore the plants that have been introduced through ISI over the decades, trace changes in their taxonomy and horticultural availability, and discover the many collectors, botanists, horticulturists, and institutions that have contributed to the program.
Please check back soon as we continue building this archive.