Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Last updated

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Type Non-departmental public body
Location
Key people
Budget£65.6 million [1]
Employees1,100
Website www.kew.org

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. An internationally important botanical research and education institution, it employs 1,100 staff. [1] Its board of trustees is chaired by Dame Amelia Fawcett.

Contents

The organisation manages botanic gardens at Kew in Richmond upon Thames in south-west London, and at Wakehurst, a National Trust property in Sussex which is home to the internationally important Millennium Seed Bank, whose scientists work with partner organisations in more than 95 countries. [2] Kew, jointly with the Forestry Commission, founded Bedgebury National Pinetum in Kent in 1923, specialising in growing conifers. [3] In 1994, the Castle Howard Arboretum Trust, which runs the Yorkshire Arboretum, was formed as a partnership between Kew and the Castle Howard Estate. [4]

In 2019, the organisation had 2,316,699 public visitors at Kew, and 312,813 at Wakehurst. [5] Its 326-acre (132 ha) site at Kew has 40 historically important buildings; it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003. [6] The collections at Kew and Wakehurst include over 27,000 taxa of living plants, [7] 8.3 million plant and fungal herbarium specimens [8] and over 2.4 billion seeds collected from nearly 40,000 species in the Millennium Seed Bank. [9]

Mission

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew states that its mission is to apply scientific discovery and research to fully develop the information about and potential uses of plants and fungi. [10]

A conference held in 1976 by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew was important as it established a co-ordinating body in order to determine which threatened plants are in cultivation and where they are located which played a role in plant conservation. [11]

Governance

Kew is governed by a board of trustees which comprises a chairman and eleven members. Ten members and the chairman are appointed by the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. His Majesty the King appoints his own trustee on the recommendation of the Secretary of State.

As of January 2025 the Board members are: [12]

Kew Science

Scientific staff

More than 470 scientists work for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. [13] The Director of Science is Alexandre Antonelli. [14] The Deputy Directors are Elizabeth Gardner, Paul Kersey and Monique Simmonds. [15]

Kew Science staff include those of the Kew Madagascar Conservation Centre. [16]

Databases

The scientific staff at Kew maintain a variety of plant and fungal data and digital resources, including those listed below. [17]

Plants of the World Online

Plants of the World Online is an online database launched in March 2017 as one of nine strategic outputs with the ultimate aim being "to enable users to access information on all the world's known seed-bearing plants by 2020". It links taxonomic data with images from the collection, to provide a single point of access with information on identification, distribution, traits, conservation, molecular phylogenies and uses. [18]

International Plant Names Index

The International Plant Names Index (IPNI) includes information from the Index Kewensis , a project which began in the 19th century to provide an "Index to the Names and Authorities of all known flowering plants and their countries". [19] The Harvard University Herbaria and the Australian National Herbarium co-operate with Kew in the IPNI database, which was launched in its present form in 1999 to produce an authoritative source of information on botanical nomenclature including publication details of seed plants, ferns and lycophytes. It is a nomenclatural listing of all published taxonomic plant names including new species, new combinations and new names at rank of botanical family down to infraspecific. It provides data for other related projects including Tropicos and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). [20]

Neotropikey

Nitropikey is an international project, based at Kew Gardens, on the flowering plants of the Neotropics (tropical South and Central America). [21] [22] [23]

World Checklist of Selected Plant Families

The World Checklist of Selected Plant Families (WCSP) is a register of accepted scientific names and synonyms of 200 selected seed plant families. WCSP is widely used, and most authoritative web resources on plants use it as their basis. [24] [20]

World Checklist of Vascular Plants

The World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP) includes all known vascular plant species (flowering plants, conifers, ferns, clubmosses, and firmosses). It is derived from the WCSP and the IPNI and therefore only includes names found in those databases. It is the taxonomic database for Plants of the World Online. Since WCSP includes only selected families, WCVP will seek to complete the process. [25] [20] [26]

World Checklist of Useful Plant Species

The World Checklist of Useful Plant Species lists 40,292 species, including nine non-plant taxa (e.g. nostoc, forkweed, brown algae), compiled from multiple pre-existing datasets. [27] [ clarification needed ]

Collaborative projects

The Plant List

Kew also cooperated with the Missouri Botanical Garden and other international bodies in The Plant List (TPL). Unlike the IPNI, it provides information on which names are currently accepted. The Plant List is an Internet encyclopedia project which was launched in 2010 to compile a comprehensive list of botanical nomenclature. [28] The Plant List has records for 1,064,035 scientific names for plant species, representing 350,699 accepted plant species. In addition, the list has records for 642 plant families and 17,020 plant genera. It was last updated in 2013, and was superseded by World Flora Online. [29] [30]

World Flora Online

World Flora Online was developed as a successor to The Plant List, in 2012, aiming to include all known plants by 2020. [30] [31]

See also

Related Research Articles

The 1893 Index Kewensis (IK), maintained by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, is a publication that aims to register all botanical names for seed plants at the rank of species and genera. It later came to include names of taxonomic families and ranks below that of species.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Asparagaceae</span> Family of plants

Asparagaceae, known as the asparagus family, is a family of flowering plants, placed in the order Asparagales of the monocots. The family name is based on the edible garden asparagus, Asparagus officinalis. This family includes both common garden plants as well as common houseplants. The garden plants include asparagus, yucca, bluebell, and hosta, and the houseplants include snake plant, corn cane, spider plant, and plumosus fern.

<i>Scilla luciliae</i> Species of plant in the family Asparagaceae

Scilla luciliae is a species of flowering plant in the family Asparagaceae. It is referred to by the common names Bossier's glory-of-the-snow or Lucile's glory-of-the-snow, and is a bulbous perennial from western Turkey that flowers in early spring. After flowering, it goes into dormancy until the next spring. The specific epithet is in honour of Lucile, the wife of the Swiss botanist Pierre Edmond Boissier (1810-1885). It belongs to a group of Scilla species that were formerly put in a separate genus, Chionodoxa, and may now be treated as Scilla sect. Chionodoxa.

<i>Heracleum sphondylium</i> Species of flowering plant in the celery family Apiaceae

Heracleum sphondylium, commonly known as hogweed or common hogweed, is a herbaceous perennial plant in the carrot family Apiaceae, which includes fennel, cow parsley, ground elder and giant hogweed. It is native to most of Europe, western Asia and northern Africa, but is introduced in North America and elsewhere. Other common names include cow parsnip. The flowers provide a great deal of nectar for pollinators.

<i>Tiarella</i> Genus of flowering plants in the family Saxifragaceae

Tiarella, the foamflowers, is a genus of flowering plants in the family Saxifragaceae. The generic name Tiarella means "little turban", which suggests the shape of the seed capsules. Worldwide there are seven species, one each in eastern Asia and western North America, plus five species in eastern North America. As of October 2022, the taxonomy of Tiarella in eastern North America is in flux.

<i>Tiarella trifoliata</i> Species of flowering plant

Tiarella trifoliata, the three-leaf foamflower, is a species of flowering plant in the family Saxifragaceae. The specific name trifoliata means "having three leaflets", a characteristic of two of the three recognized varieties. Also known as the laceflower or sugar-scoop, the species is found in shaded, moist woods in western North America.

<i>Symphyotrichum lateriflorum</i> Species of flowering plant in family Asteraceae

Symphyotrichum lateriflorum is a species of flowering plant in the aster family (Asteraceae). Commonly known as calico aster, starved aster, and white woodland aster, it is native to eastern and central North America. It is a perennial and herbaceous plant that may reach heights up to 120 centimeters and widths up to 30 centimeters.

<i>Stenanthium</i> Genus of flowering plants

Stenanthium is a North American genus of flowering plants in the tribe Melanthieae of the family Melanthiaceae.

<i>Barleria prionitis</i> Species of flowering plant

Barleria prionitis is a shrub in the family Acanthaceae, native to Island and Mainland Southeast Asia, China, the Indian Subcontinent, the Arabian Peninsula and northeastern Africa. It is widely spread as an ornamental and weed, occurring in naturalised populations around the world. It used not only as an ornamental but also as a hedge and extensively as a component of folk medicines. As a weed it is regarded as problematic in many areas.

The Plant List was a list of botanical names of species of plants created by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Missouri Botanical Garden and launched in 2010. It was intended to be a comprehensive record of all known names of plant species over time, and was produced in response to Target 1 of the 2002–2010 Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, to produce "An online flora of all known plants". It has not been updated since 2013, and has been superseded by World Flora Online.

<i>Hymenodictyon</i> Genus of flowering plants

Hymenodictyon is a genus of flowering plants in the family Rubiaceae. It has about 30 species. All are native to the Old World. The wood of Hymenodictyon orixense is soft and has limited use, mostly for boxes. The type species for Hymenodictyon is Hymenodictyon orixense.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">World Checklist of Selected Plant Families</span> Collaborative taxonomic project at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

The World Checklist of Selected Plant Families was an "international collaborative programme that provides the latest peer reviewed and published opinions on the accepted scientific names and synonyms of selected plant families." Maintained by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, it was available online, allowing searches for the names of families, genera and species, as well as the ability to create checklists.

<i>Acokanthera oblongifolia</i> Species of plant

Acokanthera oblongifolia is a plant in the family Apocynaceae. It grows as an evergreen shrub or small tree up to 6 metres (20 ft) tall. Its fragrant flowers feature a white tinged pink corolla. The berries are purple when ripe. Its habitat is dry forest and coastal thickets. Acokanthera oblongifolia is used in local African medicinal treatments for snakebites, itches and internal worms. The plant has been used as arrow poison. The species is native to Mozambique and South Africa.

<i>Desmodium glabellum</i> Species of legume

Desmodium glabellum is a species of flowering plant in the legume family Fabaceae. It is native to the eastern and central United States. It is commonly called Dillenius' tick-trefoil in honor of Johann Dillenius, a British botanist of German birth. It is also known as the tall tick-trefoil.

<i>Periploca laevigata</i> Species of flowering plant

Periploca laevigata is a species of flowering plant in the family Apocynaceae, native to the Canary Islands, the Savage Islands and Cape Verde.

Plants of the World Online (POWO) is an online database published by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

<i>Holubia saccata</i> Species of flowering plant

Holubia is a monotypic genus of flowering plants belonging to the family Pedaliaceae. The only species is Holubia saccata.

References

  1. 1 2 Annual reports 2020.
  2. "How we work". Millennium Seed Bank. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 26 August 2017.
  3. England, Forestry Commission. "History of Bedgebury National Pinetum". www.forestry.gov.uk. Archived from the original on 16 August 2018. Retrieved 15 August 2018.
  4. "Background". The Yorkshire Arboretum . Retrieved 15 August 2018.
  5. "ALVA – Association of Leading Visitor Attractions". www.alva.org.uk. Retrieved 23 October 2020.
  6. Guinness World Records 2011. Guinness World Records. 2010. pp.  69. ISBN   978-1-904994-57-2.
  7. "Living Collections". Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 16 January 2025.
  8. Paton, Alan; Willis, Kathy; Smith, Rhian (15 March 2018). "Launching the Science Collections Strategy 2018–2028". Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 16 January 2025.
  9. "Seed Collection". Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 16 January 2025.
  10. "About us". Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 16 January 2025.
  11. Prance, Ghillean T. (December 2010). "A brief history of conservation at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew". Kew Bulletin. 65 (4): 501–508. doi:10.1007/s12225-010-9231-2. ISSN   0075-5974. S2CID   42245259.
  12. "Board of Trustees". Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 16 January 2025.
  13. "Kew Science". Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 19 September 2023.
  14. "Professor Alexandre Antonelli". Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 24 December 2024.
  15. "Organisational structure and staff: Science". Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 16 January 2025.
  16. "UK and Islands – Madagascar". Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
  17. "Data and digital resources". Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 16 January 2025.
  18. "About Plants of the World Online". Plants of the World Online . Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 16 January 2025.
  19. Hooker, Joseph Dalton (1893). Preface. Index Kewensis plantarum phanerogamarum: nomina et synonym omnium generum et specierum a linnaeo usque as annum MDCCLXXXV complectans nomine recepro auctore patria unicuique planta subjectis: sumptibus beati Caroli Roberti Darwin ductu et consilio Josephi D. Hooker. 2 vols [Index Kewensis: an enumeration of the genera and species of flowering plants from the time of Linnaeus to the year 1885 inclusive together with their authors names, the works in which they were first published, their native countries and their synonyms: compiled at the expense of the late Charles Robert Darwin under the direction of Joseph D. Hooker]. By Jackson, Benjamin Daydon. Oxford: Clarendon Press.(at Biodiversity Heritage Library)
  20. 1 2 3 Turner, Robert; Govaerts, Rafaël (2019). Challenges of Integrating and Curating Nomenclatural and Taxonomic Data in the World Checklist of Vascular Plants. SI87 - Empowering the taxonomic community by linking information through names and taxonomy. Biodiversity Information Science and Standards (Conference abstract). Vol. 3. p. e37226. doi: 10.3897/biss.3.37226 .
  21. "Key to the Flowering Plant Families of the Neotropics". lucidcentral.org. Retrieved 16 January 2025.
  22. Bishop, Joe. "Developing an identification key for the economically important genus Inga". Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 16 January 2025.
  23. "Neotropical Flowering Plants". Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. Archived from the original on 1 February 2020.
  24. "World Checklist of Selected Plant Families". Kew Science. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Archived from the original on 11 June 2020. Retrieved 12 June 2020.
  25. "About the World Checklist of Vascular Plants". Plants of the World Online . Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 16 January 2015.
  26. Govaerts, Rafaël; Nic Lughadha, Eimear; Black, Nicholas; Turner, Robert; Paton, Alan (2021). "The World Checklist of Vascular Plants, a continuously updated resource for exploring global plant diversity". Scientific Data. 8 (1): 215. Bibcode:2021NatSD...8..215G. doi:10.1038/s41597-021-00997-6. PMC   8363670 . PMID   34389730.
  27. Diazgranados, Mauricio; Allkin, Bob; Black, Nicholas; Cámara-Leret, Rodrigo; Canteiro, Cátia; Carretero, Julia; Eastwood, Ruth; Hargreaves, Serene; Hudson, Alex; Milliken, William; Nesbitt, Mark; Ondo, Ian; Patmore, Kristina; Pironon, Samuel; Turner, Robert; Ulian, Tiziana (2020). "World Checklist of Useful Plant Species". The Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity. doi:10.5063/F1CV4G34.
  28. Paton, Alan (2013). "What's in a name? New version of The Plant List released". Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 16 January 2025.
  29. "The Plant List". The Plant List . 1.1. September 2013. Retrieved 16 January 2025.
  30. 1 2 "World Flora Online: An Online Flora of All Known Plants". The World Flora Online Consortium. Retrieved 16 January 2025.
  31. "About the World Flora Online Project". The World Flora Online Consortium. Retrieved 16 January 2025.

Sources