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botanical garden , originally, a collection of living plants designed chiefly to illustrate relationships within plant groups. In modern times, most botanical gardens are concerned primarily with exhibiting ornamental plants, insofar as possible in a scheme that emphasizes natural relationships. Thus, the two functions are blended: eye appeal and taxonomic order. Plants that were once of medicinal value and extremely important in early botanical gardens are now chiefly of historical interest and are not particularly represented in contemporary collections. A display garden that concentrates on woody plants (shrubs and trees) is often referred to as an arboretum . It may be a collection in its own right or a part of a botanical garden.

A major contemporary objective of botanical gardens is to maintain extensive collections of plants, labeled with common and scientific names and regions of origin. Plant collections in such gardens vary in number from a few hundred to several thousand different kinds, depending on the land area available and the financial and scholarly resources of the institution.

As world populations become more urbanized, botanical gardens are increasingly recognized as among the important cultural resources of industrialized nations. Botanical gardens offer the city dweller part of the natural environment that he no longer has access to; furthermore, they offer a mental escape from population pressure and suggest new interests and hobbies having to do with the natural world.

What can be called the roots of the botanical garden as an institution are traceable to ancient China and many of the countries bordering the Mediterranean. These actually were often centres for the raising of fruit trees, vegetables, and herbs used for food and in making the crude medicines of the time. After the discovery of printing, manuscripts on plants, which had been in existence for centuries, became more widely circulated, and these stimulated further publication of descriptive works called herbals . The herbalists and their herbals, in turn, stimulated the founding of botanical gardens. By the end of the 16th century there were five such gardens in Europe , and by the mid-20th century several hundred. The first two were in Italy, at Pisa (1543) and at Padua (1545). At first, such gardens were associated with the medical schools of universities. Professors of medicine were mainly the botanists of that time, and their “physic gardens” served for the training of students as well as for growing plants to make medicines. But they served in other ways as well. Carolus Clusius , a noted botanist of the 16th century, for example, brought together an extensive collection of flowering bulbs at the botanical garden in Leiden, Netherlands , which proved to be the beginning of the Dutch bulb industry.

In the early 1800s Jean Gesner, a Swiss physician and botanist, noted that by the end of the 18th century there were 1,600 botanical gardens in Europe. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the science of botany took form, and many of the important botanists of the period were directors of the botanical gardens of their day. Since that time, the classical botanical garden as a teaching and medicinal garden declined, to be replaced by gardens devoted mainly to plant culture and the display of ornamental plants and plant groups of special interest.

The larger collections of living plants constitute a formidable resource for professional scholars, but, more importantly, they provide a rich opportunity for the general public to learn more about plants and how to grow them. Some gardens offer popular-level short courses on plants and plant cultivation each year, both for adults and for children.

Botanical gardens constitute reservoirs of valuable heritable characteristics, potentially important in the breeding of new varieties of plants. Longwood Gardens , in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Agriculture , has in recent years sent out several expeditions to collect species that have promise as breeding stock or, in some instances, are already attractive ornamental plants. Historically, England’s Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew are most famous for their collecting expeditions and the distribution of economic plants to parts of the world where they could be grown most successfully. Kew is responsible for the wide popularity and spread of such plants as the rubber tree ( Hevea brasiliensis ), pineapple, banana, tea , coffee , cacao , various timbers, and cinchona (yielding quinine) and other drug producers.

Still another function of botanical gardens is the training of gardeners. Canada has long had such a program at the Niagara Falls Parks Commission’s School of Horticulture. Such training programs at Kew, Edinburgh, Dublin, and the Royal Horticultural Society’s garden at Wisley have produced many able gardeners for supervisory positions in many countries.

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• v.40(4); 2018 Aug

The role of botanical gardens in scientific research, conservation, and citizen science

a Kunming Botanical Garden, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650204, Yunnan, China

b Yunnan Key Laboratory for Integrative Conservation of Plant Species with Extremely Small Populations, Kunming, 650204, China

c Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, 650204, Yunnan, China

Weibang Sun

Associated data.

Plant diversity is currently being lost at an unprecedented rate, resulting in an associated decrease in ecosystem services. About a third of the world's vascular plant species face the threat of extinction due to a variety of devastating activities, including, over-harvesting and over exploitation, destructive agricultural and forestry practices, urbanization, environmental pollution, land-use changes, exotic invasive species, global climate change, and more. We therefore need to increase our efforts to develop integrative conservation approaches for plant species conservation. Botanical gardens devote their resources to the study and conservation of plants, as well as making the world's plant species diversity known to the public. These gardens also play a central role in meeting human needs and providing well-being. In this minireview, a framework for the integrated missions of botanical gardens, including scientific research, in / ex situ conservation, plant resource utilization, and citizen science are cataloged. By reviewing the history of the development of Kunming Botanical Garden, we illustrate successful species conservation approaches (among others, projects involving Camellia , Rhododendron , Magnolia , Begonia , Allium , Nepenthes , medicinal plants, ornamental plants, and Plant Species with Extreme Small Populations), as well as citizen science, and scientific research at Kunming Botanical Garden over the past 80 years. We emphasize that Kunming Botanical Garden focuses largely on the ex situ conservation of plants from Southwest China, especially those endangered, endemic, and economically important plant species native to the Yunnan Plateau and the southern Hengduan Mountains. We also discuss the future challenges and responsibilities of botanical gardens in a changing world, including: the negative effects of outbreeding and/or inbreeding depression; promoting awareness, study, and conservation of plant species diversity; accelerating global access to information about plant diversity; increasing capacity building and training activities. We hope this minireview can promote understanding of the role of botanical gardens.

1. Botanical gardens: a unique benefit for humans

Although the birth of the “garden” dates back to the Zhou dynasty in China, the modern concept of a botanical garden originated in Europe (Italy's Padova Botanic Garden was built in 1545). Today, there are about 2500 botanical gardens in the world ( Golding et al., 2010 ). Together, these botanical gardens cultivate more than 6 million accessions of living plants, representing around 80,000 taxa, or about one-quarter of the estimated number of vascular plant species in the world ( Jackson, 2001 , O'Donnell and Sharrock, 2017 ). These gardens thus play a central role in the ex situ conservation and exploration of global plant biodiversity ( Mounce et al., 2017 ). Indeed, one of the targets of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) is to have 70% of the world's threatened plant species conserved ex situ ( Callmander et al., 2005 , Sharrock and Jones, 2009 , Huang, 2018 ). Botanical gardens also have an important role in the preservation of species necessary for human use and well-being ( Waylen, 2006 , Dunn, 2017 ), and this role is likely to become increasingly important as climate change becomes more severe ( Donaldson, 2009 ; Primack and Miller-Rushing, 2009 , Ren and Duan, 2017 ).

The range of scientific activities conducted by botanical gardens often includes conservation, propagation, horticulture, seed science, taxonomy, systematics, genetics, biotechnology, education, restoration ecology, public education, and much more ( http://www.bgci.org/garden_search.php ; Maunder et al., 2001 , Donaldson, 2009 ). Plant diversity is currently being lost at an unprecedented rate, resulting in an associated decrease in ecosystem services. Currently about a third of the world's 300,000–450,000 vascular plant species face extinction due to a variety of devastating anthropogenic activities, including over-harvesting, over-exploitation through destructive agricultural and forestry practices, urbanization, environmental pollution, land-use changes, exotic invasive species, and global climate change ( Pitman and Jørgensen, 2002 , Ren and Duan, 2017 ). There is, therefore, an increased need to develop integrative conservation approaches for plants, particularly those threatened plant species in the wild ( Li and Pritchard, 2009 ).

In this minireview, we introduce the scientific research, in/ex situ conservation and utilization, citizen science, education, and public communication taking place at Kunming Botanical Garden (KBG). Furthermore, to clarify the integrated functions of botanical gardens across the world, we introduce the future challenges and responsibilities these gardens face. Education, promoting awareness, and capacity building, involving both the public and staff at botanical gardens, are vital functions of modern botanical gardens ( Blackmore et al., 2011 ). These functions provide unique opportunities for plant biodiversity research, horticulture, and conservation biology in popular public places. Raising public awareness of the problems facing our planet may be sufficient to bring about fundamental behavioral changes. Finally, we also want to emphasize specific work done at KBG to commemorate its 80 th anniversary.

2. The functions of botanical gardens

2.1. scientific research.

Botanical gardens are good locations for many branches of scientific research. Botanical gardens not only serve as taxonomic and systematic research centers ( Dosmann, 2006 , Stevens, 2007 ), but they also play an important role as valuable sources of plant ecology data collection such as phenological indication of climate change, plant physiology and plant growth tactics, and plant–animal interactions ( Coates and Dixon, 2007 , Gratani et al., 2008 , Dawson et al., 2009 , Primack and Miller-Rushing, 2009 , Wang et al., 2018 ). For plant functional characteristics, botanical gardens can provide a large set of species to study functional trade-offs between species traits and plant performance ( Herben et al., 2012 ). The study of bamboos at Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden in Yunnan, China by Cao et al. (2012) revealed that the maximum height of grasses is determined by their roots. Another example is the monitoring of plant phenology varieties, which has a long tradition in some gardens and is regarded as one of the most sensitive indicators of climate impacts on vegetation in mid-latitude areas ( Menzel et al., 2006 ). In fact, botanical gardens have contributed greatly to our understanding of the responses of plant species to global climate change ( Primack and Miller-Rushing, 2009 ).

Additionally, botanical gardens are suitable locations for investigations into pollination ecology, seed dispersal, and other interactions between plants and animals. For example, through the study of seed dispersal in an endangered species, Taxus chinensis , in an ex situ conservation population introduced into the Nanjing Botanical Garden in the 1950s, researchers were able to propose that any process for the conservation of these Chinese yews should comprise not only conservation of the trees, but also conservation of these tree's avian dispersers and habitats for seed germination and seedling growth ( Lu et al., 2008 , Li et al., 2014 ). Research at botanical gardens has also guided conservationists not to neglect the potential risks of hybridization in ex situ collection of threatened plant species. Specifically, spontaneous hybridization in ex situ facilities has been shown to undermine the genetic integrity of ex situ collections and may contaminate open-pollinated seeds or seedlings ( Ye et al., 2006 , Zhang et al., 2010 ). To effectively conserve and manage the ex situ population of endangered species in botanical gardens, pollination ecology, including breeding system, effective pollinators, and other factors should be recorded and monitored carefully ( Norstog et al., 1986 , Zhang and Ye, 2011 , Chen et al., 2015a ). Moreover, native pollinator biodiversity is related to successful naturalization of alien plants in botanical gardens ( Razanajatovo et al., 2015 ). Moreover, successful naturalization of alien plants in botanical gardens also is related to native pollinator biodiversity ( Razanajatovo et al., 2015 ).

Plant conservation genetics provides suitable tools to guide conservation and successful restoration, measure and monitor processes, and ultimately minimize extinction risk of threatened plant species in nature ( Kramer and Havens, 2009 ). Over the past decades, conservation genetics has focused largely on the genetic consequences of small population size that may limit survival of populations and species. However, recent reviews on the genetic aspects of plant conservation have indicated that genetic erosion poses an increasing threat to the long-term survival of rare and common species ( Desalle and Amato, 2004 , Ouborg et al., 2006 ). For the purposes of scientific conservation, it is generally accepted that establishing a genetically representative ex situ collection requires that 50 populations per species be sampled, with 50 individuals per population ( Brown et al., 1995 ). However, for very rare tree species already reduced to a handful of individuals in the wild, it is not possible to meet these guidelines. Bringing the species into cultivation and establishing ex situ collections must be an urgent priority and may represent the last chance against extinction in the wild ( Oldfield et al., 2009 ).

2.2. In/ex situ conservation and utilization

Living plant collections are the main contribution of botanical gardens and Botanical Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) estimates that there are 6.13 million accessions in botanical gardens, comprising more than 80,000 species ( http://www.bgci.org/resources/1528 ; Jackson, 2001 ). The conservation of living plants in botanical gardens, especially of species that are threatened in the wild, has a long tradition and has greatly contributed to our understanding of threatened species ( Donaldson, 2009 ). The Convention on Biological Diversity defines ex situ conservation as the conservation of components of biological diversity outside their natural habitats. Ex situ conservation, which plays an important role in saving threatened plant species, is generally associated with botanical gardens. One of the major objectives of botanical gardens is to create and support collections of native taxa, and to build and maintain stocks of plants for ex situ conservation and sustainable utilization of plant resources in the world ( Cibrian-Jaramillo et al., 2013 ).

A basic framework for integrated plant species conservation in a botanical garden includes identification and management of threats, long-term ex situ and/or in situ germplasm storage, research and development information management, horticulture and living collections, conservation priorities, and environmental education ( Blackmore et al., 2011 ). Botanical gardens often cultivate rare plant species for the purpose of ex situ conservation ( Dosmann, 2006 ). As of 2013, botanical gardens of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have collected about 20,000 vascular plant species for conservation, which accounts for approximately 90% of all plant species maintained by all Chinese botanical gardens. This demonstrates that CAS has conserved at least 60% of China's native flora and provided an important reserve of plant resources for sustainable economic development in China. Botanical gardens are also ideal places to integrate the study and conservation of trees species that are endangered in the wild ( Newton and Oldfield, 2012 ). As an insurance policy against extinction, the cost of ex situ seed conservation is estimated to be as little as 1% of that of in situ conservation ( Li and Pritchard, 2009 ).

Strategies for conserving living plants vary among and within garden collections ( Farnsworth et al., 2006 ). The direct evaluation of the conservation value of an ex situ collection is difficult ( Schal and Leverich, 2004 ). Understanding effective sampling structure to allow the capture of significant variation for living plant conservation collections is very important for ex situ botanical populations of endangered species. Botanical gardens cultivate many species introduced from different areas, but most cultivated taxa are held in only a small number of collections, and mostly only in small populations without sufficient genetic representation. Lack of genetic exchange and stochastic processes in small populations make them susceptible to detrimental genetic effects ( Brütting et al., 2013 ). Therefore, both in situ ecosystem management and in situ conservation play important roles for the conservation of certain plant species in their native habitats. For example, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden plays a leading conservation role because of more native species distributed in that area ( Chen et al., 2009 ). The botanical garden conserves more than 10,000 plant species with living collections. Of course, the classic functions of a botanical garden, i.e., plant resource development and utilization, should not be neglected in modern botanical gardens.

2.3. Citizen science and popularization

In addition to scientific activities such as conservation and research, public education and garden displays are also important aims of botanical gardens in different countries ( Maunder et al., 2001 , Donaldson, 2009 ). Citizen science, the process whereby citizens engage in science as researchers ( Kruger and Shannon, 2000 ), has long been associated with botanical gardens. Nowadays, the focus of modern citizen science is not “scientists using citizens as data collectors,” but rather, “citizens as scientists” ( Conrad and Hilchey, 2011 ). In fact, decision-makers and NGOs are enhancing their use of volunteers to increase their ability to monitor and control natural resources, assess at-risk species, and protect natural conservation areas ( Silvertown, 2009 ). For instance, over the past 36 years, volunteers were able to provide evidence for dramatic declines in the numbers of monarch butterflies in western North America over the past 36 years ( Schultz et al., 2017 ). Using a citizen science program to investigate the spread of invasive plant species by local resident may promote both knowledge and behavioral changes in local communities ( Jordan and Ehrenfeld, 2011 ). In fact, developing and implementing public data-collection projects often yields both scientific and educational outcomes such as biological research, biodiversity monitoring, and science education ( Raimondo et al., 2006 , Bonney et al., 2009 ).

Cooperation between scientific researchers and volunteers from local communities have the potential to deepen the scope of research and increase the ability to collect scientific data ( Close et al., 2006 , Fu et al., 2006 , Aguraiuja et al., 2008 ). Local resident may contribute valuable information because they have more local knowledge from their communities ( Cohn, 2008 ). Collection-based botanical gardens exhibit plant species and thus have a special connection with nature ( Miller et al., 2004 ). Citizen science projects at botanical gardens include studies on demographics ( Wagenuis et al., 2007 ), reproduction ( Donaldson et al., 2002 , Wagenuis, 2006 ), and ecological and genetic responses to habitat fragmentation ( Neale et al., 2008 ). According to a recent study on the interactions between climate change and the functions of botanical gardens, environmental education or citizen science can affect the knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs of the people involved ( Sellmann, 2014 ). For instance, by conducting pollination in botanical gardens, citizen scientists were able to help children make the transition from seeing the natural world to scientifically observing nature ( Eberbach and Crowley, 2017 ).

3. A case study: Kunming Botanical Garden

KBG was founded in 1938 and it is affiliated with the Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences. It is situated close to the Black Dragon Pool park in a quiet northern suburb of Kunming. The Garden is located at 25°07′04.9″–25°08′54.8″N, 102°44′15.2″–102°44′47.3″E at an elevation of 1914–1990 m above sea level, and has an annual average rainfall of 1006.5 mm, an annual average temperature of 14.7 °C and an annual average relative humidity of 73%. KBG focuses largely on the ex situ conservation of plants from Southwest China, especially endangered, endemic or economically important plant species native to the Yunnan Plateau or the southern Hengduan Mountains. The primary research of KBG is on the cultivation and domestication of resource plants and the biology and botany of ex situ conservation. The garden aims to maintain a comprehensive multidisciplinary botanical garden, integrating scientific research, species conservation, public education and biological technologies, visitor services, general tourism, and the development of sustainable utilization of plant resources.

KBG covers an area of 44 ha, has 16 specialist plant collections, and contains over 7000 plant species and cultivars. The garden has received more than 40 national and provincial awards and 50 authorized patents. Some 100 plant cultivars have been bred and registered, and publications over the last decades have included about 60 monographs and 550 scientific papers ( Fig. 1 ). The garden, which receives around 800,000 visitors per year, is an important center for species conservation ( Fig. 2 ). The garden is an important center for species conservation ( Fig. 2 ). Well-known gardens of KBG include the Camellia Garden (633 species and varieties), the Rhododendron Garden (about 200 species), the Medicinal Plant Garden (more than 1000 species), the Ornamental Foliage and Fruit Plants (more than 400 species), the Magnolia Family Garden (11 genera and about 110 species), the Rock Garden (more than 300 species), the Monocotyledon Garden (near 200 species), the Rose Family Garden (25 genera and more than 110 species), the Arboretum (about 1500 species), the Begonia Garden (about 500 species), the Plant Species with Extreme Small Populations Garden (27 species), the Allium Garden (about 30 species), the Greenhouses (about 4025 m 2 and 4430 species), the Gymnosperm Garden (more than 200 species), and more. There are more than 100 plant species which have fewer than five individuals growing in KBG. Having established these specialized gardens, the next step for KBG should be to evaluate their status from a conservation perspective. For example, research that evaluates the Camellia collection should identify what percent of the ex situ collection consists of Chinese plants, how many species are on the IUCN list, how many are on the national conservation list and more. Therefore, a conservation strategy to capture the genetic variation of a wild population in a botanical garden must be developed to guide the ex situ conservation strategy in this garden.

Representative research conducted at KBG: a) Mucuna sempervirens pollinated by squirrel ( Chen et al., 2012 ); b) Auto self-pollination of Hibiscus aridicola ( Zhang et al., 2011 ); c) Fetid odor of Stemona tuberosa attracts fly ( Chen et al., 2017a ); d) Inflorescence of Amorphophallus konjac mimics livor mortis to deceive pollinators ( Chen et al., 2015b ); e) Sexual reproduction of winter-flowering monoecious plant Pachysandra axillaris mediated by honeybee ( Ge et al., 2017 ); f) Spore dispersal of fetid Lysurus mokusin by feces of mycophagous insects ( Chen et al., 2014 ); g, h) Seed dispersal of Stemona tuberosa by hornet and ants ( Chen et al., 2017b , Chen et al., 2018 ); i) Vulnerable Byasa daemonius consumes endangered Aristolochia delavayi ( Chen et al., 2015a ); j) New variety of Camellia “Spring Daze”; k, l) Pollination ecology of ex situ conservation Acer yangbiense and Craigia yunnanensis conducted by Jing Yang (unpublished data); m) Genomic in situ hybridization of Camellia conducted by Jing Yang. Photos taken by G Chen (a–i), ZF Chen (j), and J Yang (k–m).

Some representative plant species conserved in KBG: a) Musella lasiocarpa ; b &c) Buddleja delavayi and its mutant; d) Stemona mairei ; e) Lilium sargentiae ; f) Rhododendron delavayi ; g) Holcoglossum rupestre ; h) Camellia nitissima ; i) Manglietiastrum sinicum ; j) Primula denticulate ; k) Meconopsis racemose ; l) Plant Species with Extreme Small Populations garden in KBG. Photos taken by G Chen (a–d), CQ Liu (e), G Yao (f, h, j), ZL Dao (g), ZF Chen (k), and J Yang (i, l).

Over the past few years, staff from KBG successfully introduced more than 58 pitcher plant species from areas with high elevation ( Fig. 3 ). Because of the relatively high altitude of KBG, and the temperature difference between daytime and night, introduced pitcher plants from areas of high elevation grow much better at KBG than in their natural habitats. Over the next ten years, we plan to collect, conserve, and propagate more than 80% of the high-elevation nepenthes from around the world at KBG. Recently, to create new varieties of pitcher plants, Wang Xi has used horticultural techniques to conduct artificial pollination experiments in the botanical garden. We plan to collect, conserve, and propagate more than 80% of nepenthes in KBG from high altitude area in the world. His work on the ex situ conservation of these peculiar ornamentals had made a substantial contribution to the KBG.

Citizen science and public education: a) Greenhouse of KBG; b) Pitcher plant Garden; c) Allium Garden; d) Public education involved local primary school students; e & f) Local residents involved scientific research with staffs from KBG. Photos taken by ZF Chen (a, c, d, f), W Xi (b), G Chen (e).

The history of public education and citizen science at KBG started with the initial public announcement in the 1940s, although KBG officially opened to the public in June 1996. Over the past twenty years, many environmental education and citizen science projects have been conducted at KBG ( Fig. 3 ). For example, volunteers have investigated the diversity of ants (more than 42 species) and birds (more than 107 species), and studied interactions between animal and plant species at KBG. In addition, KBG staff hold an annual competition to honor excellence in the popularization of science, issue a themed calendar each year, and regularly lead capacity building and training courses in horticulture and landscape construction.

The Lijiang Alpine Botanical Garden and its associated Jade Dragon Field Station are a collaboration launched in 2001 between the Kunming Institute of Botany and the Royal Botanical Garden Edinburgh ( Blackmore and Paterson, 2006 ). All the activities and developments within the Lijiang Alpine Botanical Garden and Jade Dragon Field Station are driven by the importance of plants and the role that they play in securing a future for humanity. The botanical garden is located in the Hengduan Mountains, which is a biodiversity hotspot in China. The aims of this botanical garden are research, public education, and conservation, in addition to harboring greenhouses that support integrated in situ and ex situ conservation in the area ( Blackmore et al., 2011 ). The primary purpose of the Jade Dragon Field Station is the conservation of threatened plants and habitats through capacity-building projects that aim to bring about sustainable land management.

Re-introduction programs and restoration are extremely important components of integrative conservation, especially for plant species with small populations. Plant Species with Extremely Small Populations (PSESP), a conservation concept developed in China in 2005, are characterized by small remaining populations (lower than the minimum viable population), a restricted habitat, a high risk of extinction, and exposure to a high level of disturbance ( Ma et al., 2013 , Sun, 2013 ). A species with fewer than 5000 mature individuals in the wild and fewer than 500 in each isolated population qualifies for designation as a PSESP ( Sun, 2016 , Yang and Sun, 2017 ). The identification of a high level of disturbance and irreversible habitat destruction distinguishes PSESP from naturally rare species. To promote the conservation of PSESP, the Ministry of Science and Technology granted funding for a National Key Programme: Survey and Germplasm Conservation of PSESP in Southwest China ( Yang and Sun, 2017 ). The program started in February 2017 and will last for 5 years, with funding of RMB 24.26 million. In the past 13 years, re-introduction programs and restoration of PSESP were conducted and achieved exciting successes in Yunnan province and KBG ( Sun, 2016 ).

Scientific research at KBG focuses on different projects. The “Gold Dollar” tobacco cultivar was successfully introduced from the USA by KBG. This introduction and subsequent cultivar improvement substantially changed the cultivar structure of tobacco production and made a significant contribution to the tobacco industry in Yunnan province. Other examples include the investigation into and artificial cultivation of Dioscorea species; the introduction of olive trees and the study of their oil composition; the study of the life history, reproductive tactics, cultivation, and chemical composition of Gastrodia elata , Cyanotis arachnoidea , and Paris species, all of which have greatly promoted economic and social development in China. Research on the integrative conservation of Camellia , Buddleja , Primula , Rhododendron , Cycas , Begonia , Magnolia , orchids, Stemona , Trigonobalanus , as well as studies into the evolution of chromosomes in angiosperms, have established an important status of KBG in the field of conservation in China.

4. Future challenges and responsibilities of botanical gardens in a changing world

Different human activities, such as in situ/ex situ conservation experiments and horticultural hybrid processes in botanical gardens, are bringing previously isolated populations and species into contact ( Kramer and Havens, 2009 , Blackmore et al., 2011 ). However, the artificial gene flow that this creates may lead to the decline or loss of plant species via outbreeding depression. Indeed, recent studies have indicated the negative effects of outbreeding depression on population persistence ( Fenster and Galloway, 2000 , Edmands, 2007 ). Therefore, care needs to be taken to ensure that inbreeding and outbreeding are avoided in those accessions grown in botanical gardens.

Botanical gardens aim to promote the awareness, study, and conservation of plant species diversity. However, few studies have investigated the species diversity of botanical gardens themselves. Pautasso and Parmentier (2007) suggested that the living collections of the world's botanical gardens were not related to species-richness patterns observed in natural ecosystems. The authors call for an increase in funds to botanical gardens in species-rich regions and to scientists in underfunded countries. Additionally, botanical gardens should play key roles in the development of plant information data base to monitor variable environmental factors in gardens ( Stevens, 2007 , Paton, 2009 ). Accelerating global access to plant diversity information is necessary to managers from different botanical gardens ( Lughadha et al., 2009 ).

Horticultural actions are important parts of in situ and/or ex situ plant conservation in botanical gardens, conservation horticulture research is uniquely suited for staff in botanical gardens ( Kay et al., 2011 ). In past decades, however, the positive contribution that botanical garden horticulture has on plant conservation has been neglected by many researchers ( Blackmore et al., 2011 ). Therefore, we suggest that botanical garden horticulturists collaborate with other researchers in taxonomy, genetics, systematics, and environmental education.

In addition, conservation effect assessment and related studies are critical for conservation success in botanical gardens, and staff in these scientific centers should utilize their extensive field knowledge and experience to conduct these assessments. Otherwise, the aims of scientific conservation of threatened plant species may not be achieved.

Citizen science provides a special opportunity for botanical gardens, especially given the high visitor levels both on site and online ( Donaldson, 2009 ). However, potential conflicts between scientific research, educational activities, and the motivation of people involved should be considered during citizen science program design ( Jordan and Ehrenfeld, 2011 , Chen et al., 2015a ). Citizen science projects conducted in botanical gardens should adopt basic rules: data collected by public must be rectified by different experts; methods of data collection must be standardized; and volunteers must receive feedback about their contribution to botanical gardens.

Botanical gardens have great abilities to explore plant diversity and plant resource utilization. However, in mainstream plant science, research conducted in botanical gardens is often neglected. Scientists at botanical gardens do not frequently become leaders in the plant science community ( Blackmore et al., 2011 ). Capacity building and training activities (plant collection and identification, species recording and assessments, horticulture and conservation techniques, public education and citizen science) need to be conducted to train potential botanists and horticulturists in botanical gardens.

Finally, since the earth is entering the Anthropocene, a ‘new conservation’ concept needs to be discussed, and new technologies may also present new opportunities for researchers at botanical gardens for the post-GSPC 2020 ( Heywood, 2017 ). As a scientific botanical garden focusing on science and conservation, having a comprehensive collection policy for living collections is vital. This would consider, for example, plants of wild origin, representative populations, adequate sample sizes, explicit documentation of provenance and other collection details, and with collections being linked directly to botanical project design. To strengthen capacity and scientific research Chinese botanical gardens should i) construct specialized gardens and promote research related to those gardens, ii) improve and develop facilities for research that relies on molecular biology, and iii) construct digitized botanical gardens.

Acknowledgement

Support for this study was provided by grants from the NSFC-Yunnan joint fund to support key projects (Grant no. U1602264) and the Young Academic and Technical Leader Raising Foundation of Yunnan Province (2015HB091) to G. Chen; and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China granted funding for a National Key Programme of China: Survey and Germplasm Conservation of PSESP in Southwest China (2017FY100100) to W.B. Sun.

(Editor: Zhekun Zhou)

Peer review under responsibility of Editorial Office of Plant Diversity.

Appendix A Supplementary data related to this article can be found at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pld.2018.07.006 .

Appendix A. Supplementary data

The following is the supplementary data related to this article:

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The Evolving Role of Botanical Gardens: Hedges against extinction, showcases for botany?

Fred Powledge ( [email protected] ), a freelance writer living in Tucson, Arizona, is a member of at least four botanical gardens.

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Fred Powledge, The Evolving Role of Botanical Gardens: Hedges against extinction, showcases for botany?, BioScience , Volume 61, Issue 10, October 2011, Pages 743–749, https://doi.org/10.1525/bio.2011.61.10.3

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Botanical gardens, those islands of serenity amid society's increasing din, were defined early on as places “open to the public and in which the plants are labeled.” Today, the purpose of these gardens has greatly expanded to include rescuing plant biodiversity, offering serious programs of research and education to citizens of all ages and instruction for skilled botanists, creating aesthetically pleasing refuges from modern life, and maintaining storage centers both on-site and off-site for the long-term preservation of plant species against the time when they will have vanished from their usual habitats. Even though the role of botanical gardens has expanded, they are faced with constant funding pressures.

From their early days (which go back many centuries), botanical gardens have existed to acquaint humans with the natural world around them. The first such places were physic gardens in which the importance of medicinal plants was recognized. Later, as the age of discovery brought seeds and fruits from distant lands, botanical gardens became vital components of trade. They have always been appreciated for the beauty they harbor. With such a history, then, it was little wonder that when the world's most famous present-day garden, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, in London, blossomed into greatness, it was in part because of the desire of the Third Earl of Bute to produce for royalty a place that, as Kew's historians put it, would “contain all the plants known on Earth.” Botanical gardens have tried to meet that ambitious goal since the mid-eighteenth century.

Inevitably, because the gardens must be fertilized with money from their visitors, they are also places of entertainment, whether that means toy railroads or June weddings or music by Blondie and the Magnets (who appeared at Kew in 2011). Botanical gardens' schedule of events rarely fails to include annual occasions (Halloween is a big one) and events of homegrown interest, such as quilt shows and local ethnic festivals. Many dot their landscapes with statuary for their customers to admire.

The Palm House at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in London. Photo credit: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

The need to bring paying crowds through the turnstiles is a universal one. Botanical gardens, like many of society's cultural centers, are hurting for money as governmental funding evaporates. Traditionally, rich people gave money to botanical gardens, a practice that garden administrators hope will continue. “There are many different approaches to fundraising, but nothing exceeds private and foundation giving in terms of meeting specific needs,” Patrick Griffith, the executive director of the Montgomery Botanical Center in Miami, said in an interview. But philanthropy is clearly not enough. Most botanical gardens have added a gift shop (or two) and a marketing arm to entice the public.

There are few nations of the world without botanical gardens. Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI), the London-based center of the gardens' global network, has more than 700 members in 118 countries (see box 1 for a sampling). BGCI has documented over 150,000 plants in cultivation in botanical gardens, of which many thousands are threatened with extinction in the wild. The organization's membership is creating recovery plans for more than 500 of the threatened species. Guardianship of plant germplasm is the gardens' biggest responsibility, says Sara Oldfield, BGCI's secretary general and author of Botanic Gardens: Modern-Day Arks (2010, MIT Press). “I think that's the absolutely essential role of botanic gardens, as the pressures are mounting on wild plants,” she said. “And we have to take care of them wherever we can.”

The Arnold Arboretum, administered by Harvard University near Boston, is a blend of public place (it is one of the city's parks) and celebrated research center. Its living collections hold some 15,000 plants, representing almost 4000 taxa.

Quaid-i-Azam University, in Islamabad, Pakistan, is building a botanical garden from scratch, with the aim of researching commercial, medicinal, and ornamental plants. Ecofarming, a “rose boulevard,” solar energy, and picnicking are in the garden's future, says an announcement from the university, “if it does not run into financial snags”—a phrase well known to garden administrators everywhere.

Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, near Cape Town, South Africa, celebrates the unique flora of the Cape Floristic Region, which is one of the world's six floral kingdoms (geographic zones in which plants grow) and a global hotspot of biodiversity. Botanic Gardens Conservation International's (BGCI's) Oldfield recently visited botanical gardens throughout Africa and believes that they will become increasingly important. “In some countries,” she said, “botanic gardens are at a crossroads because they are both combining their historical functions and increasingly being called upon to answer the world's biodiversity and climate change problems.”

The Missouri Botanical Garden (MOBOT), founded in 1859, is a US National Historic Landmark. Its 79 acres in the heart of St. Louis contain a glass dome, the Climatron, full of tropical plants, and a premier collection of rare orchids. It offers myriad educational programs for adults and children and leaves few corners of the natural world uncelebrated. (This year the garden mounted an exhibition of tree houses in order to demonstrate “the significant role trees play in our lives and in the health of our planet.”) Behind the scenes, MOBOT is a celebrated global research center, with staff working in every continent save Antarctica. It has its own publishing house, and its plant database, TROPICOS, contains Web-searchable records for more than 900,000 plant names and close to 2 million specimens. In 2010, the garden and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, announced that they had completed The Plant List, a working list of all known land plant species—1.25 million scientific plant names ( www.theplantlist.org ).

A favorite resting spot of birds is the saguaro cactus, which grows only in the Sonoran Desert. Photo credit: Fred Powledge.

The Arizona—Sonora Desert Museum, near Tucson, is dedicated to the appreciation and conservation of the Sonoran Desert, which straddles the US—Mexican border and is best known as the sole home of the saguaro cactus. The 21-acre outdoor museum is a network of paths winding through several microzones that house animals as well as plants—mountain lion and smaller cats, inquisitive prairie dogs, Mexican gray wolves, legions of lizards, and abundant bird life.

The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, in southwest London, is internationally famous both for its pleasing layout and architecture and its devotion to research. Kew has more than 30,000 kinds of living plants, more than a million preserved herb specimens, and a huge library and has added most recently its Millennium Seed Bank Project, which keeps germplasm frozen in long-term storage.

Semmozhi Poonga, a recently established garden in Chennai (formerly Madras), India, demonstrates that botanical gardens do not necessarily bloom from ancient roots. This one sprouted in 2010 on the land of the former Drive-In Woodlands Hotel. Its 22 acres already contain more than 500 plant species and 80 trees.

Few botanical gardens today would fail to include in their mission statements a commitment to fighting extinction and the loss of biological diversity. Plant habitat and diversity are disappearing under an onslaught of development, agriculture, overcollecting, and trade. Climate change is affecting plant survival and causing some species to disappear or to try to migrate. Invasive and nonnative species often outcompete native species for habitat. The experts that botanical gardens need are becoming scarce, and university botany departments are shrinking. So too is funding by federal land management agencies. And then there is plant blindness.

Plant blindness is a term, big in plant conservation circles these days, that was coined by professor James Wandersee, of Louisiana State University, and Elizabeth Schussler, of the Ruth Patrick Science Education Center (www.aibs.org/eye-on-education/eye_ on_education_2003_10.html). It refers to what Wandersee and Schussler describe as humans' “inability to see or notice the plants in [their] environment,” “the inability to recognize the importance of plants in the biosphere and in human affairs,” and “the misguided anthropocentric ranking of plants as inferior to animals and, thus, as unworthy of consideration.” Wandersee and Renee M. Clary wrote that “most people in developed nations tend to see plants as merely a green, blurry backdrop for the animals and human-made objects that populate their visual field.” The cure for such blindness, the authors wrote, is “botanical education, plant mentorship, and direct experience” to make “plants become salient, meaningful, and valued.”

Botanical garden directors have been quick to take up the cause. Overcoming plant blindness is a challenge but one for which they are well suited. The gardens have known and preached for years that the extinction dilemma is real and that the green blur beneath people's feet or the canopy over their heads requires attention. The gardens, with their expert abilities with regard to plant conservation, can produce action plans to protect existing species and restore species at risk—and can do so without sacrificing their roles as centers of beauty and spiritual refreshment.

In addition to their in situ collections of germplasm—their attractively laid-out plots of local herbs, angiosperms, and indigenous trees, often supplemented by exotica from faraway parts of the world—botanical gardens are engaged in ex situ conservation. As in the zoological world, off-site cultivation and storage exist as a safeguard against real-world extinction. Although botanical gardens prefer in situ conservation to the artificial nature of ex situ conservation, the latter is a necessary evil. Peter Wyse Jackson, now director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, wrote in 2000, when he was secretary general of BGCI,

As a method of conservation, ex situ [conservation] is inherently deficient in that it is not usually possible to maintain more than a limited sample of the genetic diversity in cultivation or in storage. In addition, it may lead to unpredictable genetic change and can become in practice a form of domestication. It is often regarded as preservation rather than conservation. In contrast, in situ conservation, at least in theory, allows plant populations to develop and evolve in, and as part of, the ecosystem of their natural habitat.

But in the real world, Jackson concluded, both methods are necessary (see box 2).

The following is an interview with Kathryn L. Kennedy, president and executive director of the independent, nonprofit Center for Plant Conservation (CPC), a network of botanical institutions “dedicated solely to preventing the extinction of US native plants.” Kennedy, a plant scientist from Texas, oversees a network of collaborating institutions, such as gardens, arboretums, and natural history museums that have botanists on staff. These institutions collect live material from endangered plants, then maintain it as seed, rooted cuttings, or mature plants, all with the aim of someday returning it to its natural habitat.

Has the center's work blunted the extinction crisis?

Americans are impatient, want endpoint results, and generally think in terms of short-term problem solving—preferably [spanning] five years or less. But for species imminently on the brink, the situation is dire by definition, and there are seldom quick and dramatic results…. [Achieving and documenting recovery] is a long process, in most cases, easily [spanning] 25–30 years or more to alleviate threats, achieve the level of habitat protection and management that may be needed, reverse decline, achieve self-sustaining levels, and maintain them for a species across its range long enough to deduce with confidence the species is no longer inherently at risk.

I believe we are making progress in both stabilization and full recovery. The Holy Grail for preventing extinction would be removal from the list of endangered or threatened species [because of] stabilization…

Robbins' cinquefoil ( Potentilla robbinsiana ) is the most notable example of a plant species delisted because [of] improved numbers and condition and threat management. That is a species that one of our participating institutions, the New England Wild Flower Society, worked hard with over 20 years…. This was a very successful partnership project involving our CPC institution, the US Forest Service, [the] US Fish and Wildlife Service, [the] Appalachian Mountain Club, and many other partners…. So we are beginning to see the fruits of efforts [that have been] underway for some time.

Kathryn Kennedy, president and executive director of the Center for Plant Conservation. Photo credit: David Kennedy.

How does CPC view the balance between in situ and ex situ conservation and restoration of plant species?

The species we work with have reached critically low levels. Nearly 75 percent of federally listed species have fewer than 100 individuals remaining in the majority of wild sites left. For most species, this does not represent a viable population…. CPC has always worked in the restoration interface for imperiled plant recovery. We believe that ex situ actions and in situ actions for restoration are both important tools for recovery. Our ex situ work… has been designed from inception to capture the wild traits necessary to support restoration in the wild and [to] provide the plant material that will be needed for population-level restoration.

Should reintroduction of plant species be considered a last-ditch effort?

Reintroduction is definitely intensive care for a species, and you would not undertake it if there was an expectation that habitat management and restoration alone would be sufficient for a species to… respond and recover. But for seriously impaired species and populations, direct work like reintroduction or augmentation may be necessary…. This is because by the time they are listed, plants are in worse shape than many animal populations, and they often suffer from very small populations that are not self-sustaining… and may be suffering genetic erosion, and also because sites have been lost and habitat is fragmented so that increasing the number of populations to fill critical gaps is also needed.

Every species is different, and we conduct every reintroduction we undertake in a well-documented context as an experiment we learn from, so we are still learning a great deal about the process, but we see increasing signs of success…. I just heard from an institution with a species where the reintroduction sites for the species are currently doing relatively better than the wild populations.

Has the status of imperiled plants improved in recent years?

We've made limited but promising progress. The imbalance in funding is problematic and is getting worse, to the extent [that] funding for all endangered species is under attack. It declined significantly in the last [federal] budget and drastically in the current proposed budget. Clearly… substantially more funding is needed if we really want to provide for endangered species recovery…. Plants encompass more than half the federally listed species, but they get less than 5 percent of federal agency expenditures for recovery action. By any standard, then, the endangered species budget is clearly less than half of what is needed.

The ex situ placement of plants brings up another question—one concerning the long-term effects of the “assisted migration” of species that must be moved because of global climate change. Sarah Reichard, a professor at the University of Washington and associate director of the university's botanical garden, says that such migration, also called managed relocation , is controversial. What happens, she wonders, if moved species turn into invasive pests in their new habitats? Plants are creatures not only of their own germplasm but also of their genetically diverse populations and the ecosystems in which they grow. This is another reason, she feels, that “seed banking is one of the most valuable things we can do.” If a plant is to be restored, she said, “we want to preserve the evolutionary potential of the species by having lots of genotypes, in the hopes that some will survive varying conditions.”

The university's garden has a state-of-the-art vault in which the seeds of more than 320 of Washington's rare plant species have been identified and conserved ( http://courses.washington.edu/rarecare/SeedVault.htm ). Mindful of the potential need to use stored seed in the event of catastrophe, but also of its uncertainties, Reichard and her colleagues have done experimental reintroductions. They are also aware of the fact that, of the 9000 or so globally threatened species that are in botanical garden collections, around one-third are found in only one garden. “Putting all your eggs (or seeds) in one basket is always risky,” she said. “We have divided some of our seed collections and sent them to other vaults for storage.” The garden is similarly diligent in tracking and protecting the diversity of seeds in its ex situ collection.

The discussion of how botanical gardens should maintain their collections— in situ , ex situ , or both—is pretty well settled. For gardens with the resources to do so, both methods are necessary tools in the battle against extinction. Gardens value and seek volunteer help to use these tools, and by and large, they get it. What they do not get is enough money.

There is another lively question confronting botanical gardens, however, and it concerns their social relevance (see box 3).

Citizens of Charlottesville, Virginia, are in the process of finding out. Some of them, gathered beneath the moniker McIntire Botanical Garden, are hoping that the city will use a plot of centrally situated land as a newborn garden.

As is often the case with urban projects, this one evolved from competing ideas about how to use some land. Paul Goodloe McIntire gave the land to the city in 1926. Half the plot was put to passive recreational use; half was turned into a golf course. Then came a master plan and proposals that some of the land be used instead for a parkway. It was the parkway that ignited the McIntire fire. A coalition was formed to stop the road. Committees formed and legal actions ensued, and out of it all grew the proposal for a botanical garden.

Through the summer of 2011, a series of public hearings was focused on what the public might want in a botanical garden. A Web site was erected. Membership lists were drawn up. Proponents formed a partnership with Whole Foods. (“Our vision and goals align [with those of Whole Foods] to protect and preserve the environment, bring plants and people together, and enrich the community through education and enjoyment,” say the McIntire supporters.) The garden's backers started an educational program to inform citizens of its benefits (it is close to the city center; ideal for community events and educational opportunities; a great destination for children, visitors, and researchers seeking “a place of serenity and beauty while creating opportunities for all to be informed about horticulture, sustainability, and climate change”). Money? Charlottesville has a long history of public—private partnerships. Political support? Three city council members are to be elected later this year, and all of the candidates are believed to support the project.

Helen Flamini, president of the fledgling garden effort, says that the first phase (after the hoped-for city approval) will be the drafting of a master horticultural plan that will extend 25 years into the future. At the base of it all is McIntire's motto: “A garden for everyone!”

Despite efforts to attract more visitors by adding entertainment centers and special event venues, many botanical gardens are still viewed as staid places, reflecting the conservatism of the wealthy people whose money founded them. In a recent report on gardens in the United Kingdom, commissioned by BGCI, it was found that many of them were perceived as “exclusive and elite institutions.” What was needed, concluded the authors of the study, was a broadening of audience appeal and an engagement “with community concerns and needs.” The result, the report said, could be a much-needed reconnection of the public with nature. Of course, greater turnover at the gardens' turnstiles would be a nice byproduct, too.

Carlos Magdalena (shown here), horticulturalist at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in London, helped bring Nymphaea thermarum back from near extinction. The water lily, one of the smallest in the world, was rescued from a freshwater hot spring in Rwanda by German botanist Eberhard Fischer. Kew helped propagate the lily's seeds. Photo credit: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

The University of Washington's botanical garden maintains a seed vault in which the biodiversity of more than 320 of the state's rare plant species is conserved. Volunteer Sarah Bailey sorts tiny seeds to be added to the collection. Photo credit: Jennifer Youngman.

Some of the efforts to reconnect may seem a far cry from how botanists once envisioned botanical gardens. But gardens do what they must to keep their doors open in lean times. The New York Botanical Garden imports performers from Broadway shows to kick off some of its events. The Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, Arizona, put on a wedding contest said to be valued at $85,000 in which the winning bride got a wedding dress, flowers, food, hair styling (“whimsically romantic”), makeup (“more fierce with rosy cheeks, smoky eyes flared out on sides to create that timeless ′40s look”), a day at a spa, Swarovski earrings, and much more—all of it provided by a couple of dozen vendors, who were prominently named. The garden also runs a beer garden; for $55, visitors can experience “a vintage urban lounge with a hint of Bavarian influence” among the cacti.

The Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens, in Coral Gables, Florida, is a respected tropical research institution, but it also throws “South Florida's most decadent festival,” in which chocolate is the centerpiece. (Chocolate, after all, comes from a tropical tree.) For $20,000, a vendor at the “Dark Chocolate” level in the 2009 festival got “exclusivity” at the event—prominent display of its logo, the right to use the festival in its promotion and advertising, 20 tickets to the Chocolate VIP party, and other perks. Sponsorship at the “Milk Chocolate (Platinum)” level cost $10,000 and included 12 party tickets. For $500, you got a “Hot Chocolate”—level sponsorship.

The BGCI report on social relevance paid special notice to one unusual garden: the Eden Project. Situated in Cornwall, in the United Kingdom, Eden offers not the peace and quiet that characterize many botanical gardens, starting with its namesake, but, rather, education, “playfulness” (aimed specifically at children), and a clear focus on its “social role and relevance.” Eden, said the report, “is much more focused on community engagement and advocates for social change.” The result may confuse some fans of traditional botanical gardens; among Eden's recent offerings were circus acts and a concert by Primal Scream and the Horrors. The business network “Bloomberg Business-Week” refers to Eden as “a theme park.”

The theme, thinks Sir Ghillean Prance, is a worthy one. Prance is Eden's scientific director, and he has impeccable credentials. He was director of research for the New York Botanical Garden; was a director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and was a founder of its Millennium Seed Bank; and is a noted rainforest scholar.

Botanical gardens play an important role in introducing children to the natural world and to science. Here, students visit the Kew gardens. Photo credit: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

“Eden was not set up as a botanic garden,” said Prance.

We have national botanic gardens in England, Scotland, and Wales, so there was no need for another similar institution…. Eden is a showcase of botany, whose purpose is to show the importance of plants to people and to stimulate sustainable use of all plants. It is indeed a social enterprise organization…. Many things that originated at Eden are being copied and used in botanical gardens. We are quite happy about that, but Eden will not gravitate towards becoming a traditional botanic garden. Because we are a major tourist attraction, we get many visitors who would not normally go to botanic gardens, and so we are reaching a wider audience with the message of the importance of plants and the need to conserve them.

Prance sees no conflict between botanical gardens as places of both scientific research and trapeze acts. “If a garden has a research program, then the visiting public should know about it,” he said, adding that he had made sure that the Millennium Seed Bank at Kew had large windows so the visiting public could see seed researchers at work. “[Some] of the principal differences between a botanic garden and a park [are] that [the former] is involved in science, conservation, and educational activities,” he said. “All of these must be demonstrated to the visitor.”

Whatever botanical gardens' future, the need for social relevance— however it is defined—will not go away. Nor will the need to raise the sums of money that are required for serious research. Some changes may be wrenching (rock music in botanical gardens may take some getting used to), but change is inevitable.

One major factor in the evolving role of gardens will be the ongoing effects of climate change. BGCI notes that, although some plant responses to climate changes are known, “we have only just begun to understand how the interaction of these changes impacts plants and their role in regulating the global climate.” Scientific evidence is mounting that rising temperatures contribute to the migration of plant species—or at least to those plants capable of spreading their seeds into new territories. And, for people and their botanical gardens in Oceania, higher water levels brought on by warming may force migration of both plants and animals.

Defining success among botanical gardens is difficult, given the diversified constituencies of the gardens. “Every garden will have its own definition,” says Reichard of the University of Washington. Asked what a proper definition of success might be, she replied:

I guess a general answer would be “if they are fulfilling their mission.” Ours is “sustaining ecosystems and the human spirit through plant research, display, and education.” Measuring that might be a little difficult, but if you went through each of the garden's departments and found ways that they are supporting the mission, you could say we are successful.

She hastened to explain the “human spirit” part. “I thought that was a little touchy feely when we first added that, but I went along with it,” she said. “But in the few months right after September 11, 2001, gardens all reported a huge increase in visitors, and I got it. If we can provide people some relief from the problems of the world by sharing nature and the beauty of plants, I think that is a pretty nice goal.”

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Botanical Gardens Facing Biodiversity Conservation and Climate Change

• Reference work entry
• First Online: 25 November 2020
• Cite this reference work entry

• María P. Martín 6 ,
• Graciela Barreiro 7 ,
• Ana María Benavides Duque 8 ,
• Zenaide Magalhães 9 &
• Esteban Manrique 10  

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals ((ENUNSDG))

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Arboretum ; Global change ; Global warming ; Restoration

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The role of Botanical Gardens is presented in its biodiversity conservation and climate change dimensions in the context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development framework (UN 2015 ).

Although gardens date back thousands of years to China’s Zhou dynasty, 1122–249 BCE (Chen and Sun 2018 ), the modern concept of a Botanical Garden originated in Europe; the oldest is the Orto Botanico di Pisa founded in 1544, which continues to operate today. Botanical gardens are public, private, or associative institutions that maintain collections scientifically ordered of plants, documented and labeled, for research, but also for education and recreation ( The Botanic Gardens Conservation Strategy , IUCN-BGCS and WWF 1989 ).

Climate change (CC) refers to changes in Earth’s weather patterns, mainly associated with changes in Earth’s average atmosphere temperature due to the increase of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) in the atmosphere...

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Martín, M.P., Barreiro, G., Duque, A.M.B., Magalhães, Z., Manrique, E. (2021). Botanical Gardens Facing Biodiversity Conservation and Climate Change. In: Leal Filho, W., Azul, A.M., Brandli, L., Lange Salvia, A., Wall, T. (eds) Life on Land. Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95981-8_124

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The role of botanical gardens in scientific research, conservation, and citizen science

Affiliations.

• 1 Kunming Botanical Garden, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650204, Yunnan, China.
• 2 Yunnan Key Laboratory for Integrative Conservation of Plant Species with Extremely Small Populations, Kunming, 650204, China.
• 3 Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, 650204, Yunnan, China.
• PMID: 30740563
• PMCID: PMC6137266
• DOI: 10.1016/j.pld.2018.07.006

Plant diversity is currently being lost at an unprecedented rate, resulting in an associated decrease in ecosystem services. About a third of the world's vascular plant species face the threat of extinction due to a variety of devastating activities, including, over-harvesting and over exploitation, destructive agricultural and forestry practices, urbanization, environmental pollution, land-use changes, exotic invasive species, global climate change, and more. We therefore need to increase our efforts to develop integrative conservation approaches for plant species conservation. Botanical gardens devote their resources to the study and conservation of plants, as well as making the world's plant species diversity known to the public. These gardens also play a central role in meeting human needs and providing well-being. In this minireview, a framework for the integrated missions of botanical gardens, including scientific research, in / ex situ conservation, plant resource utilization, and citizen science are cataloged. By reviewing the history of the development of Kunming Botanical Garden, we illustrate successful species conservation approaches (among others, projects involving Camellia , Rhododendron , Magnolia , Begonia , Allium , Nepenthes , medicinal plants, ornamental plants, and Plant Species with Extreme Small Populations), as well as citizen science, and scientific research at Kunming Botanical Garden over the past 80 years. We emphasize that Kunming Botanical Garden focuses largely on the ex situ conservation of plants from Southwest China, especially those endangered, endemic, and economically important plant species native to the Yunnan Plateau and the southern Hengduan Mountains. We also discuss the future challenges and responsibilities of botanical gardens in a changing world, including: the negative effects of outbreeding and/or inbreeding depression; promoting awareness, study, and conservation of plant species diversity; accelerating global access to information about plant diversity; increasing capacity building and training activities. We hope this minireview can promote understanding of the role of botanical gardens.

Keywords: Botanical gardens; Citizen science; Conservation biology; Endangered plants; Germplasm; Horticulture.

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Representative research conducted at KBG:…

Representative research conducted at KBG: a) Mucuna sempervirens pollinated by squirrel (Chen et…

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Some representative plant species conserved in KBG: a) Musella lasiocarpa ; b &c)…

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Citizen science and public education: a) Greenhouse of KBG; b) Pitcher plant Garden;…

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Nine Visions of 2050 as Depicted by Science Fiction

How much do you know about the link between science and literature, openmind books, scientific anniversaries, fanny hesse, the mother of bacterial cultures, featured author, latest book, the history of botanical gardens: living museums and research centres.

Created to conserve and exhibit the exotic species coming from the ‘new’ continents, botanical centres are reinventing themselves to catalogue and save the plant wealth of the planet.

In her 2016 book “Lab Girl”, Hope Jahren, professor of geobiology at the University of Oslo , says that she chose not to study the sea because “it is a lonely and empty place”. According to her data, there is six hundred times more life on the land than in the sea, the cause of which is mainly due to the age-old and silent work of plants. She cites, for example, the case of the protected forests in the western United States, her country of origin, where 80 billion trees grow; that is, for every American there are more than 200 trees. Jahren also makes a request: open the window and look out; do you see any plants?

While a negative response is unlikely, it is possible that if the window looks out over a contemporary cityscape, the view could be somewhat monotonous: slender banana plants in the streets, red-flowered geraniums in spring… The number of species in our cities pales in comparison to the overwhelming and diverse wonders of plant life that survive on the planet despite the strong pressure they have been under for too many decades. Science, however, has devised a way of compensating for this, shall we say, urban plant uniformity, by creating true paradises in the midst of stone and asphalt : botanical gardens. Living museums.

The first botanical garden to be created with an early vocation for research, that is, with the idea of doing something that would lead to new knowledge beyond the simple cultivation of plants, which is obviously very old, or creating a place of leisure, was the botanical garden of the University of Pisa in 1544, at the height of the Renaissance. Many followed, most of them in Italy like those in Padua or Florence, and from there they spread to the rest of Europe. The initial objective was the cultivation of medicinal and food plants and the exotic species that explorers began to bring back with them from their overseas voyages, and to investigate their properties.

The evolution of a garden

Since then, one of the most significant features of these gardens is the evolution that botanical science has undergone over the last 150 years. While the science was initially limited to an anatomical description of the plant, classifying it according to the standards developed by Charles Linnaeus in the 18th century , identifying it and, as far as possible, assigning it certain characteristics, today’s botanists ask themselves not only if a species is new or not, but also what relationship it has with others, how it has arrived at a certain place and how it has evolved. “ This is what is called evolutionary research, which helps us to understand how life appeared and how it has become diversified, how more and more differences have appeared between living beings, always in order to adapt better to the environments in which they are found ,” explains Esteban Manrique Reol, director of the Royal Botanical Garden (Madrid), which opened in 1781 under the reign of Charles III of Spain and currently operates as a research centre of the Spanish National Research Council.

The laboratories in botanical gardens have gone from being well equipped with magnifying glasses and microscopes to nowadays even having PCR machines ( so sadly current these days ) to amplify genes and make comparisons, as well as electron microscopes and similar instruments of the so-called molecular method, which allow botanists to see details that until now have been hidden from the human eye.

Current research also requires a lot of going out into the field: “Many plants are threatened because the environment is so constraining on their way of life that they lose their ability to reproduce, to produce seed or at least viable seed. Given that the evolutionary process is very slow, if we are suffering from very rapid environmental changes, such as climate change or pollution… there are many species that are disappearing before they can adapt to these new changes,” explains Manrique.

Saving threatened plants and digitizing their vast collections

Thus, today’s botanists seek out these plants at risk to find those that are most viable, and establish methods to reproduce them in situ in the gardens themselves. From there, the aim is to find seeds and create new fertile plants in the so-called germplasm bank so that, if necessary, they can be returned to their original populations where they are disappearing.

Botanical gardens have a collection of living plants, but also herbaria: collections of plants or parts of plants —dead, dried and identified— that can often be many hundreds of years old. For their conservation —the problem is that insects or fungi eat them— the methods of conservators have evolved from the application of insecticides to the current technique of freezing; all the plants that enter or are exchanged between herbariums spend at least one or two weeks at –20°C before being incorporated into the collection.

Finally, like so many institutions, gardens are rushing to digitise their collections and archives so that researchers from all over the world can consult them. To date, the Royal Botanical Garden (Madrid) has digitised some 800,000 herbarium specimens from its total of about 1,300,000. Meanwhile, all the marvels of the 18th century botanical plate archive, drawn by the great botanical explorers such as José Celestino Mutis, a pioneer of this discipline in Spain and Latin America, are already on display in the digital world for anyone who needs more than the view from their window.

Eugenia Angulo

@eugenia_angulo, related publications.

• Linnaeus and the Feat of Ordering Nature
• Zealandia and the Mystery of the Origin of Flowers
• Plants, the Root of the Earth's Health Problem

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Regenerating and developing a national botanical garden (nbg) in khartoum, sudan: effect on urban landscape and environmental sustainability.

1. Introduction

1.1. objectives of research.

• Comprehensive development of the national botanical garden and retaining its historical features;
• Developing a methodology to determine the requirements and needs of users of the botanical garden in the language of number, measure the extent to which botanical gardens meet the needs and requirements of users, and use a technology system that aims to raise the quality of botanical gardens that contribute to enhancing the urban landscape and environmental sustainability;
• Highlighting the importance of establishing a botanical garden for each climate region in Sudan and their effects on environmental sustainability.

1.2. Overview of Study Area

1.3. literature review.

• The concept of the natural-space-human system ecosystem;
• The basic elements of the natural-space-human system ecosystem: environmental circle (or domain) and the composition model of the ecological chain;
• Management and regulation of urban landscape system based on natural-space-human system ecosystem, structural network, functional mechanism, and spatiotemporal distribution.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. research design methods, 2.1.1. utilization the questionnaire, 2.1.2. subjects of the study, 2.1.3. sampling technique, 2.1.4. sample characteristics, 2.1.5. data collection procedures, 4. discussion, 5. conclusions.

• Incorporate ecological plant-based remediation approaches into environmental management strategies by collaborating with ecological restoration experts to tailor techniques to specific environmental challenges;
• Invest in preserving historical and cultural heritage while updating infrastructure to contemporary standards. Engage experts in architecture, engineering, and heritage conservation to ensure projects are technically sound and culturally sensitive;
• Implement water-saving measures like efficient irrigation systems and rainwater harvesting, alongside waste reduction and recycling initiatives, to minimize the NBG’s ecological footprint;
• Develop interactive exhibits, educational programs, and international partnerships to engage visitors of all ages and backgrounds, promoting cultural exchange and enriching visitor experiences;
• Foster ongoing research collaborations with institutions and botanical experts to advance knowledge in botanical conservation, plant propagation, genetic conservation, environmental restoration, and environmental sustainability.
• Transformative Approaches: the study lays the groundwork for innovative botanical garden development and urban regeneration in Sudan;
• Modern Technology and Sustainable Practices: it emphasizes the use of modern technology and sustainable methods for improving infrastructure and environmental resilience;
• Scalable Model: it proposes establishing botanical gardens in different climatic regions of Sudan, offering a scalable model for nationwide environmental sustainability;
• Urban Planning Influence: the study’s findings could influence urban planning policies, integrating green spaces into urban landscapes;
• Promoting Sustainability: it aims to enhance environmental sustainability and improve urban living conditions;
• Blueprint for Future Projects: the principles and methods could serve as a blueprint for future urban regeneration and biodiversity preservation efforts in Sudan.

Author Contributions

Institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, acknowledgments, conflicts of interest, abbreviations.

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Share and Cite

Fadelelseed, S.; Xu, D.; Li, L.; Tran, D.; Chen, X.; Alwah, A.; Bai, H.; Farah, Z. Regenerating and Developing a National Botanical Garden (NBG) in Khartoum, Sudan: Effect on Urban Landscape and Environmental Sustainability. Sustainability 2024 , 16 , 7863. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16177863

Fadelelseed S, Xu D, Li L, Tran D, Chen X, Alwah A, Bai H, Farah Z. Regenerating and Developing a National Botanical Garden (NBG) in Khartoum, Sudan: Effect on Urban Landscape and Environmental Sustainability. Sustainability . 2024; 16(17):7863. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16177863

Fadelelseed, Safa, Dawei Xu, Lianying Li, Ducthien Tran, Xi Chen, Abdulfattah Alwah, He Bai, and Zoheir Farah. 2024. "Regenerating and Developing a National Botanical Garden (NBG) in Khartoum, Sudan: Effect on Urban Landscape and Environmental Sustainability" Sustainability 16, no. 17: 7863. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16177863

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Protecting Desert Plants

• Research & Conservation

Working to Save Desert Plants and Habitats since 1939

Since 1939, Desert Botanical Garden has served as a global leader in the research and conservation of desert plants and their habitats. Today, Research & Conservation staff at the Garden collaborates with academic, research and conservation groups across six countries and four continents. The work being done is leading to the discoveries of new plant species, conservation of threatened and endangered species and identifying emerging threats such as climate change to invasive species to the desert habitats throughout the world.

SCIENTISTS AT WORK

Hazel hare center for plant science.

The 85,000-square-foot Center is where Garden staff, researchers and volunteers are at work growing, studying and taking care of a world-class collection of desert plants. Many of these species are rare and endangered.

Seed Bank and Seed Photography Laboratory

The herbarium.

Desert Botanical Garden Herbarium (DES) is the largest herbarium in Arizona that is supported by a nonprofit institution and is the fourth largest herbarium in Arizona. It holds more than 93,000 accessions in the collection. The accession of the initial core collections for DES was started in the 50s and in 1972 it was designated as a National Resource Collection. 

The Dryland Plant Ecophysiology Lab

Laboratory of evolutionary and conservation genetics, pollinator conservation research program.

The Garden is researching the way plants support our pollinators and other beneficial insects. Insects, especially pollinators and butterflies, are undergoing drastic declines. They depend on plants for nectar, pollen or as a host for herbivorous caterpillars. In order to conserve butterflies, we need to support the plants that give them life and better understand these relationships. 

Saguaro Census

The Garden is launching the 3 rd   Annual Saguaro Census in May to document more saguaros throughout the Phoenix metro area using the   iNaturalist   app. We have learned a lot   about saguaros in the Valley and new challenges have emerged:

Saguaro Initiatives

The summer heat in Arizona has intensified in recent years. With temperatures frequently surpassing 100 degrees for several consecutive days. These harsh conditions affect all desert inhabitants, including plants.

The Garden is a proud member and partner of national and international organizations dedicated to research and conservation of life on our planet.

See Annual Report and Financials

Collaborating on Plant Conservation Around the World

Botanic gardens are wonderfully vibrant places where we connect people to plants in myriad ways. Not only do gardens provide respite and beauty to our visitors, but they play an important role in conserving plants representing Earth’s ecosystems. In early August, about 750 botanic garden professionals from across the globe met in Singapore at the eighth Global Botanic Garden Congress hosted by Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) and the Singapore Botanic Gardens. Delegates gathered to network, share successes, gather feedback and discuss ideas on the role botanic gardens can play in implementing the Global Biodiversity Framework (the Framework). 

As a Patron Member Garden with BGCI, Denver Botanic Gardens holds a seat on the International Advisory Council. During the Council‘s annual meeting we shared updates from regional networks and discussed the upcoming Conference of the Parties 16 (COP16) to be held in Colombia this fall. (See my previous blog on my trip to COP15.) The group has crafted Plant Complementary Actions to outline the role botanic gardens can play in the Framework. Much of the work we do here at Denver Botanic Gardens, whether it be seed collection of rare species, documenting plant diversity in our foothills or helping to understand the best way to restore large areas of land, connects to the Framework. Any organization and any project working to understand and protect biodiversity can contribute to the success of the Framework.

While at the Congress I gave two presentations on our work at the Gardens sharing highlights of our urban projects and Chatfield Farms. I also co-organized a workshop dedicated to “Updating the North American Botanic Garden Strategy for Plant Conservation - Reestablishing the Network and Developing a Plan of Action.”

No trip to Singapore would be complete without a visit to their botanic gardens. I was lucky enough to visit Singapore Botanic Gardens multiple times. The large garden provides an oasis of green in the bustle of the city. Gardens By the Bay provides a contrast to the Singapore Botanic Gardens through its grandeur and engineering. The iconic supertrees are wonderful and intriguing. The less well-known conservatories are captivating for their size and construction alone. The Flower Dome hosts plants from around the world as well as frequently rotating displays. The climate indoor is Mediterranean and pleasant in the Singapore heat. The Cloud Forest boasts a five-story-tall waterfall immediately inside the entrance. It was such a unique experience to be surrounded by lush tropical foliage while meandering down the path from the top of the waterfall back to the dome floor.

Overall, it was an incredibly fruitful meeting and an experience I won’t forget.

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