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The National Plant Collection is a plant conservation scheme in the United Kingdom. Run by Plant Heritage (formerly the National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens), a registered charity, [1] it aims to protect and develop the biological and heritage resource of plants in UK gardens.
Participating individuals or organisations undertake to document, develop, and preserve a comprehensive collection of one group of plants in trust for the future. Most collections are composed of a related group, for example, a collection of oaks or daffodils. This allows the scheme to develop systematic coverage of cultivated plants in the United Kingdom. A few national collections are of plants introduced by a prolific nursery or plant hunter; for example, the Sir Harold Hillier Gardens and Arboretum hold a collection of Hillier's introductions.
Collection holders voluntarily subscribe to the scheme's ideals and stringent requirements. They come from every sector of horticulture, both amateur and professional.
Almost half of the collections are in private ownership and these include allotments, back gardens and large estates. Just under a third are found in nurseries, which range from large commercial concerns to the small specialist grower. Twenty-one local authorities are involved in the scheme, including Leeds City Council, caring for eleven collections, and Bournemouth Borough Council with their Abelia and Clethra collections.
Universities, agricultural colleges, schools, arboreta (e.g. Bedgebury Pinetum) and botanic gardens (the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Glasgow Botanic Gardens and both Oxford and Cambridge [2] ) all add to the diversity. There are also a number of collections on properties belonging to English Heritage, the National Trust and the National Trust for Scotland, and the Royal Horticultural Society holds 25 National Plant Collections across its five gardens. [3]
A botanical garden or botanic garden is a garden with a documented collection of living plants for the purpose of scientific research, conservation, display, and education. Typically plants are labelled with their botanical names. It may contain specialist plant collections such as cacti and other succulent plants, herb gardens, plants from particular parts of the world, and so on; there may be greenhouses, shadehouses, again with special collections such as tropical plants, alpine plants, or other exotic plants. Most are at least partly open to the public, and may offer guided tours, educational displays, art exhibitions, book rooms, open-air theatrical and musical performances, and other entertainment.
Plant Heritage, formerly known as the National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens (NCCPG), is a botanical conservation organisation in the United Kingdom and a registered charity. It was founded in 1978 to combine the talents of botanists, horticulturalists and conservationists with the dedication of keen amateur and professional gardeners. The mission statement of the organisation declares that "The NCCPG seeks to conserve, document, promote and make available Britain and Ireland's rich biodiversity of garden plants for the benefit of everyone through horticulture, education and science." Specifically, the aims of the organisation are to:
Graham Stuart Thomas, was an English horticulturist, who is likely best known for his work with garden roses, his restoration and stewardship of over 100 National Trust gardens and for writing 19 books on gardening, many of which remain classics today. However, as he states in the Preface to his outstanding book, The Rock Garden and its Plants: From Grotto to Alpine House, "My earliest enthusiasms in gardening were for....alpines." p8
The Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney is a heritage-listed major 30-hectare (74-acre) botanical garden, event venue and public recreation area located at Farm Cove on the eastern fringe of the Sydney central business district, in the City of Sydney local government area of New South Wales, Australia.
Ulmus laevisPall., variously known as the European white elm, fluttering elm, spreading elm, stately elm and, in the United States, the Russian elm, is a large deciduous tree native to Europe, from France northeast to southern Finland, east beyond the Urals into Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, and southeast to Bulgaria and the Crimea; there are also disjunct populations in the Caucasus and Spain, the latter now considered a relict population rather than an introduction by man, and possibly the origin of the European population. U. laevis is rare in the UK, although its random distribution, together with the absence of any record of its introduction, has led at least one British authority to consider it native. NB: The epithet 'white' elm commonly used by British foresters alluded to the timber of the wych elm.
Ulmus davidiana var. japonica, the Japanese elm, is one of the larger and more graceful Asiatic elms, endemic to much of continental northeast Asia and Japan, where it grows in swamp forest on young alluvial soils, although much of this habitat has now been lost to intensive rice cultivation.
Ulmus 'Nanguen' is a complex fourth generation Dutch hybrid cultivar raised at the Dorschkamp Research Institute for Forestry & Landscape Planning, Wageningen. Lutèce was derived from the cross 'Plantyn' ×, an ancestry comprising four field elms, a wych elm, the curious Exeter Elm ('Exoniensis'), and a frost-resistant selection of the Himalayan elm.
Ulmus 'New Horizon' is an American hybrid cultivar raised by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), from a crossing of the Japanese Elm clone W43-8 = 'Reseda' with Siberian Elm clone W426 grown from seed collected from a street tree at Yankton, South Dakota. Tested in the US National Elm Trial coordinated by Colorado State University, 'New Horizon' averaged a survival rate of 74% after 10 years.'New Horizon' was patented in the US in 1994, while in Europe, it is marketed as one of the 'Resista' elms protected under EU breeders' rights.
The Sir Harold Hillier Gardens is an arboretum comprising 72 hectares accommodating over 42,000 trees and shrubs in about 12,000 taxa, notably a collection of oaks, camellia, magnolia and rhododendron.
The Victoria Medal of Honour (VMH) is awarded to British horticulturists resident in the United Kingdom whom the Royal Horticultural Society Council considers deserving of special honour by the Society.
The field elm cultivar Ulmus minor 'Stricta', known as Cornish elm, was commonly found in South West England, Brittany, and south-west Ireland, until the arrival of Dutch elm disease in the late 1960s. The origin of Cornish elm in England remains a matter of contention. It is commonly assumed to have been introduced from Brittany. It is also considered possible that the tree may have survived the ice ages on lands to the south of Cornwall long since lost to the sea. Henry thought it "probably native in the south of Ireland". Dr Max Coleman of Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, arguing in his 2002 paper on British elms that there was no clear distinction between species and subspecies, suggested that known or suspected clones of Ulmus minor, once cultivated and named, should be treated as cultivars, preferred the designation U. minor 'Stricta' to Ulmus minor var. stricta. The DNA of 'Stricta' has been investigated and the cultivar is now known to be a clone.
Ulmus 'Fiorente' is a hybrid cultivar elm derived from a crossing of the Siberian Elm Ulmus pumila clone 'S.10' from Lucca, Italy, with the Ulmus minor clone 'C.02' from Lungarno, Florence, by the Istituto per la Protezione delle Piante (IPP), part of the Italian National Research Council, in Florence. The tree is protected by Plant Breeders' Rights bestowed by the EU on 25 March 2010.
Sir Harold George Hillier was an English horticulturist.
The cultivation of elms in Australia began in the first half of the 19th century, when British settlers imported species from their former homelands. Owing to the demise of elms in the northern hemisphere as a result of the Dutch elm disease pandemic, the mature trees in Australia's parks and gardens are now regarded as amongst the most significant in the world.
Kew Gardens is a botanic garden in southwest London that houses the "largest and most diverse botanical and mycological collections in the world". Founded in 1840, from the exotic garden at Kew Park, its living collections include some of the 27,000 taxa curated by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, while the herbarium, one of the largest in the world, has over 8.5 million preserved plant and fungal specimens. The library contains more than 750,000 volumes, and the illustrations collection contains more than 175,000 prints and drawings of plants. It is one of London's top tourist attractions and is a World Heritage Site.
The Oman Botanic Garden is a development of the Diwan of Royal Court in Oman, with unique plants, landscapes, and cultural traditions of Oman. The gardens are located on 423 hectares in Al Khoud, about 20 kilometers from the capital Muscat. The garden showcases all of the native plant species of Oman in a series of man-made naturalistic habitats from the dry deserts to the rich monsoon cloud forests. The garden also showcases the traditionally cultivated crops, with information on how plants are used by the people of Oman. It presents an opportunity for visitors to experience the flora and vegetation of Oman while learning about the agricultural heritage, cultural traditions, and hospitality of the country.
Flecker Botanic Gardens is a heritage-listed botanic garden at Collins Avenue, Edge Hill, Queensland, Australia. It was built from 1886 to 1960s. It is now known as Cairns Botanic Gardens, and also known as Edge Hill Nursery, and Fitzalan's Botanical Gardens. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 2 February 2007.
Myall Park Botanic Garden is a heritage-listed botanic garden at Myall Park Road, Glenmorgan, Western Downs Region, Queensland, Australia. It was founded by grazier David Morrice Gordon who made the first plantings on his Myall Park sheep station in 1941. He expanded the garden in the 1950s with the help of gardeners Len Miller and Alf Gray and nursery buildings were built by Harry Howe. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 9 November 2012.
The field elm cultivar Ulmus minor 'Viminalis' (:'willow-like'), occasionally referred to as the twiggy field elm, was raised by Masters in 1817, and listed in 1831 as U. campestris viminalis, without description. Loudon added a general description in 1838, and the Cambridge University Herbarium acquired a leaf specimen of the tree in 1866. Moss, writing in 1912, said that the Ulmus campestris viminalis from Cambridge University Herbarium was the only elm he thought agreed with the original Plot's elm as illustrated by Dr. Plot in 1677 from specimens growing in an avenue and coppice at Hanwell near Banbury. Elwes and Henry (1913) also considered Loudon's Ulmus campestris viminalis to be Dr Plot's elm. Its 19th-century name, U. campestris var. viminalis, led the cultivar to be classified for a time as a variety of English Elm. On the Continent, 'Viminalis' was the Ulmus antarcticaHort., 'zierliche Ulme' [:'dainty elm'] of Kirchner's Arboretum Muscaviense (1864).
PlantNetwork - the Plant Collections Network of Britain and Ireland is a non-profit charitable organization founded in 1996 that "aims to promote botanical collections in Britain and Ireland as a national resource for research, conservation and education and to facilitate networking and training among holders of plant collections". The current honorary president of the charity is Fellow David Rae, who was also involved in the creation of the journal Sibbaldia in 2003. The collections covered under the charity's support network include the National Trust for Scotland, the Forestry Commission, and the Royal Horticultural Society. PlantNetwork routinely holds conferences and workshops on both how to plant and handle trees and how to keep up material records on trees and their growth. The group also releases a newsletter covering similar information.