Botanical garden
Botanical gardens grow a wide variety of
plants primarily categorized and documented for scientific purposes.
Botanists tend the
flora and maintain the garden's library and
herbarium of dried and documented plant material. Botanical gardens may also serve to entertain and educate the public, upon whom many depend for funding. However, not all botanical gardens are open to the public: for example the
Chelsea Physic Garden.
From the late
18th century onward,
European botanical gardens began sending plant-collecting expeditions to various parts of the world and publishing their findings. Voyages of exploration routinely included botanists for this purpose. Subsequent scientific work studied how these exotic plants might be adapted to grow in the garden's locale, how to
classify them, and how to
propagate rare or
endangered species. The
Royal Botanic Gardens in
Kew, near
London, has continuously published journals and more recently catalogues and databases since this time.
Educational projects at botanical gardens range from introductions to plants that thrive in different environments to practical advice for the home gardener. Many have plant shops, selling flower, herb, and vegetable seedlings suitable for transplantation. Some gardens such as the
UBC Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research and the
Chicago Botanic Garden have plant breeding programs and introduce new plants to the
horticultural trade.
Image:US botanic garden 3.jpg|Inside the United States Botanic GardenImage:Kew_Palm_House.JPG|Inside Kew Gardens Palm HouseImage:Aswan, Kitchener's Island, palm alley, Egypt, Oct 2004.jpg|A botanical garden of Kitchener's Island, AswanImage:UBC Botanical Garden water.jpg|University of British Columbia Botanical GardenImage:Jardim Botânico de Coimbra2.jpg|Botanical Garden of the University of Coimbra, Portugal |
Inside the Rio de Janeiro Botanic Garden (Brazil), 1890 |
The first modern botanical gardens were founded in Northern
Italy in connection with universities:
*
Pisa (1544) by Luca Ghini (1490-1556)
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Padua (1545)
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Florence (1545)
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Bologna (1567)
Other European towns and universities then followed suit:
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Leiden,
Netherlands (1590)
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Montpellier,
France (1593)
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Heidelberg,
Germany (1597)
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Tübingen,
Germany by
Leonhart Fuchs*
Copenhagen,
Denmark (1600)
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Oxford,
England (1621)
*
Uppsala,
Sweden (1655)
*
Hannover,
Germany (1666)
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List of botanical gardens*
Plant collecting
