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Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a
non-departmental public body In the United Kingdom, non-departmental public body (NDPB) is a classification applied by the Cabinet Office, Treasury, the Scottish Government, and the Northern Ireland Executive to public sector organisations that have a role in the process o ...
in the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
sponsored by the
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is a Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom, ministerial department of the government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for environmental quality, environmenta ...
. An internationally important
botanical Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who s ...
research and education institution, it employs 1,100 staff. Its board of trustees is chaired by Dame Amelia Fawcett. The organisation manages botanic gardens at Kew in
Richmond upon Thames The London Borough of Richmond upon Thames () in south-west Greater London, London, England, forms part of Outer London and is the only London boroughs, London borough on both sides of the River Thames. It was created in 1965 when three smaller ...
in south-west London, and at Wakehurst, a
National Trust The National Trust () is a heritage and nature conservation charity and membership organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Trust was founded in 1895 by Octavia Hill, Sir Robert Hunter and Hardwicke Rawnsley to "promote the ...
property in
Sussex Sussex (Help:IPA/English, /ˈsʌsɪks/; from the Old English ''Sūþseaxe''; lit. 'South Saxons'; 'Sussex') is an area within South East England that was historically a kingdom of Sussex, kingdom and, later, a Historic counties of England, ...
which is home to the internationally important
Millennium Seed Bank The Millennium Seed Bank Partnership (MSBP or MSB), formerly known as the Millennium Seed Bank Project, is the largest '' ex situ'' plant conservation programme in the world, coordinated by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK. After being awar ...
, whose scientists work with partner organisations in more than 95 countries. Kew, jointly with the
Forestry Commission The Forestry Commission is a non-ministerial government department responsible for the management of publicly owned forests and the regulation of both public and private forestry in England. The Forestry Commission was previously also respons ...
, founded
Bedgebury National Pinetum Bedgebury National Pinetum at Bedgebury, Kent, in the United Kingdom, is a recreational and conservational arboretum managed by Forestry England that was established as the National Conifer Collection in 1925 and is now recognised as the most ...
in
Kent Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...
in 1923, specialising in growing
conifers Conifers () are a group of cone-bearing seed plants, a subset of gymnosperms. Scientifically, they make up the division Pinophyta (), also known as Coniferophyta () or Coniferae. The division contains a single extant class, Pinopsida. All e ...
. In 1994, the Castle Howard Arboretum Trust, which runs the Yorkshire Arboretum, was formed as a partnership between Kew and the
Castle Howard Castle Howard is an English country house in Henderskelfe, North Yorkshire, north of York. A private residence, it has been the home of the Earl of Carlisle, Carlisle branch of the House of Howard, Howard family for more than 300 years. Castle ...
Estate. In 2019, the organisation had 2,316,699 public visitors at Kew, and 312,813 at Wakehurst. Its site at Kew has 40 historically important buildings; it became a
UNESCO World Heritage Site World Heritage Sites are landmarks and areas with legal protection under an treaty, international treaty administered by UNESCO for having cultural, historical, or scientific significance. The sites are judged to contain "cultural and natural ...
in 2003. The collections at Kew and Wakehurst include over 27,000
taxa In biology, a taxon (back-formation from ''taxonomy''; : taxa) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular name and ...
of living plants, 8.3 million plant and fungal herbarium specimens and over 2.4 billion seeds collected from nearly 40,000 species in the Millennium Seed Bank.


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. 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.


Governance

Kew is governed by a
board of trustees A board of directors is a governing body that supervises the activities of a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government agency. The powers, duties, and responsibilities of a board of directors are determined by government regulatio ...
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 The secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, also referred to as the environment secretary, is a Secretary of State (United Kingdom), secretary of state in the Government of the United Kingdom, with overall responsibility for ...
. His Majesty the King appoints his own trustee on the recommendation of the Secretary of State. the Board members are: * Dame Amelia Fawcett (Chair) * Steve Almond * Judith Batchelar * Fay Cooke * Professor Christopher Gilligan * Professor Ian Graham *
Krishnan Guru-Murthy Krishnan Guru-Murthy (born 5 April 1970) is a British journalist. He is the lead presenter of ''Channel 4 News''. He also presents ''Unreported World'', a foreign-affairs documentary series. Early life Guru-Murthy's father, an Indian consulta ...
* Sir
Paul Nurse Sir Paul Maxime Nurse (born 25 January 1949) is an English geneticist, former President of the Royal Society and Chief Executive and Director of the Francis Crick Institute. He was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along ...
* Kate Priestman * David Richardson * John Scanlon


Kew Science


Scientific staff

More than 470 scientists work for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The Director of Science is
Alexandre Antonelli Alexandre Antonelli (born 15 August 1978) is Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK, Professor of Biodiversity and Systematic at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford. He is a ...
. The Deputy Directors are Elizabeth Gardner, Paul Kersey and Monique Simmonds. Kew Science staff include those of the Kew Madagascar Conservation Centre.


Databases

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


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 280px, Generalized scheme of taxonomy Taxonomy is a practice and science concerned with classification or categorization. Typically, there are two parts to it: the development of an underlying scheme of classes (a taxonomy) and the allocation ...
data with images from the collection, to provide a single point of access with information on identification, distribution, traits, conservation, molecular phylogenies and uses.


International Plant Names Index

The International Plant Names Index (IPNI) includes information from the ''
Index Kewensis 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 ...
'', 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". The
Harvard University Herbaria The Harvard University Herbaria and Botanical Museum are institutions located on the grounds of Harvard University at 22 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Botanical Museum is one of three which comprise the Harvard Museum of Natura ...
and the
Australian National Herbarium The Australian National Botanic Gardens (ANBG) is a heritage-listed botanical garden located in , Canberra, in the Australian Capital Territory, Australia. Established in 1949, the Gardens is administered by the Australian Government's Departme ...
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 Botanical nomenclature is the formal, scientific naming of plants. It is related to, but distinct from taxonomy (biology), taxonomy. Plant taxonomy is concerned with grouping and classifying plants; Botany, botanical nomenclature then provides na ...
including publication details of seed plants,
ferns The ferns (Polypodiopsida or Polypodiophyta) are a group of vascular plants (plants with xylem and phloem) that reproduce via spores and have neither seeds nor flowers. They differ from mosses by being vascular, i.e., having specialized tissue ...
and
lycophytes The lycophytes, when broadly circumscribed, are a group of vascular plants that include the clubmosses. They are sometimes placed in a division Lycopodiophyta or Lycophyta or in a subdivision Lycopodiophytina. They are one of the oldest lineage ...
. 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 Tropicos is an online botanical database containing taxonomic information on plants, mainly from the Neotropical realm ( Central, and South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Sou ...
and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (
GBIF The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is an international organisation that focuses on making scientific data on biodiversity available via the Internet using web services. The data are provided by many institutions from around the ...
).


Neotropikey

Neotropikey is an international project, based at Kew Gardens, on the
flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (). The term angiosperm is derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek words (; 'container, vessel') and (; 'seed'), meaning that the seeds are enclosed with ...
s of the
Neotropics The Neotropical realm is one of the eight biogeographic realms constituting Earth's land surface. Physically, it includes the tropical terrestrial ecoregions of the Americas and the entire South American temperate zone. Definition In biogeog ...
(tropical South and Central America).


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.


World Checklist of Vascular Plants

The World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP) includes all known
vascular plant Vascular plants (), also called tracheophytes (, ) or collectively tracheophyta (; ), are plants that have lignin, lignified tissues (the xylem) for conducting water and minerals throughout the plant. They also have a specialized non-lignified Ti ...
species (
flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (). The term angiosperm is derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek words (; 'container, vessel') and (; 'seed'), meaning that the seeds are enclosed with ...
s,
conifer Conifers () are a group of conifer cone, cone-bearing Spermatophyte, seed plants, a subset of gymnosperms. Scientifically, they make up the phylum, division Pinophyta (), also known as Coniferophyta () or Coniferae. The division contains a sin ...
s,
fern The ferns (Polypodiopsida or Polypodiophyta) are a group of vascular plants (plants with xylem and phloem) that reproduce via spores and have neither seeds nor flowers. They differ from mosses by being vascular, i.e., having specialized tissue ...
s,
clubmosses Lycopodiopsida is a class of vascular plants also known as lycopsids, lycopods, or lycophytes. Members of the class are also called clubmosses, firmosses, spikemosses and quillworts. They have dichotomously branching stems bearing simple leaves ...
, 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.


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 ''Nostoc'', also known as star jelly, troll's butter, spit of moon, fallen star, witch's butter (not to be confused with the fungi commonly known as witches' butter), and witch's jelly, is the most common genus of cyanobacteria found in a variety ...
, forkweed,
brown algae Brown algae (: alga) are a large group of multicellular algae comprising the class (biology), class Phaeophyceae. They include many seaweeds located in colder waters of the Northern Hemisphere. Brown algae are the major seaweeds of the temperate ...
), compiled from multiple pre-existing datasets.


Collaborative projects


The Plant List

Kew also cooperated with the
Missouri Botanical Garden The Missouri Botanical Garden is a botanical garden located at 4344 Shaw Boulevard in St. Louis, Missouri. It is also known informally as Shaw's Garden for founder and philanthropy, philanthropist Henry Shaw (philanthropist), Henry Shaw. I ...
and other international bodies in
The Plant List 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 specie ...
(TPL). Unlike the IPNI, it provides information on which names are currently accepted. The Plant List is an
Internet encyclopedia project An online encyclopedia, also called an Internet encyclopedia, is a digital encyclopedia accessible through the Internet. Some examples include pre-World Wide Web services that offered the ''Academic American Encyclopedia'' beginning in 1980, Encyc ...
which was launched in 2010 to compile a comprehensive list of
botanical nomenclature Botanical nomenclature is the formal, scientific naming of plants. It is related to, but distinct from taxonomy (biology), taxonomy. Plant taxonomy is concerned with grouping and classifying plants; Botany, botanical nomenclature then provides na ...
. 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 World Flora Online is an Internet-based compendium of the world's plant species. Description The World Flora Online (WFO) is an open-access database, launched in October 2012 as a follow-up project to The Plant List, with the aim of publishi ...
.


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.


See also

* The two main sites of Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew: **
Kew Gardens Kew Gardens is a botanical garden, botanic garden in southwest London that houses the "largest and most diverse botany, botanical and mycology, mycological collections in the world". Founded in 1759, from the exotic garden at Kew Park, its li ...
** Wakehurst,
West Sussex West Sussex is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Surrey to the north, East Sussex to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Hampshire to the west. The largest settlement is Cr ...
* Botanists active at Kew Gardens *''
Curtis's Botanical Magazine ''The Botanical Magazine; or Flower-Garden Displayed'', is an illustrated publication which began in 1787. The longest running botanical magazine, it is widely referred to by the subsequent name ''Curtis's Botanical Magazine''. Each of the issue ...
'', an illustrated publication which began in 1787 and is published by
Wiley-Blackwell Wiley-Blackwell is an international scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons. It was formed by the merger of John Wiley & Sons Global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business with Blackwell Publish ...
for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew * Directors of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew * Curators of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew *
GrassBase GrassBase (or GrassBase – The Online World Grass Flora) is a web-based database of grasses, continually maintained and updated by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. As of 2015, GrassBase was one of the largest (along with GrassWorld) structured d ...
, a
web Web most often refers to: * Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal * World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to: Computing * WEB, a literate programming system created by ...
-based database of
grass Poaceae ( ), also called Gramineae ( ), is a large and nearly ubiquitous family (biology), family of monocotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as grasses. It includes the cereal grasses, bamboos, the grasses of natural grassland and spe ...
es, continually maintained and updated by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew * The Great Plant Hunt, a primary school science initiative created by Kew Gardens, commissioned and funded by the
Wellcome Trust The Wellcome Trust is a charitable foundation focused on health research based in London, United Kingdom. It was established in 1936 with legacies from the pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome (founder of Burroughs Wellcome, one of the predec ...
*
Joseph Dalton Hooker Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (30 June 1817 – 10 December 1911) was a British botanist and explorer in the 19th century. He was a founder of geographical botany and Charles Darwin's closest friend. For 20 years he served as director of the Ro ...
, who succeeded his father,
William Jackson Hooker Sir William Jackson Hooker (6 July 178512 August 1865) was an English botany, botanist and botanical illustrator, who became the first director of Kew Gardens, Kew when in 1841 it was recommended to be placed under state ownership as a botan ...
, as director in 1865 * ''
Index Kewensis 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 ...
'', a massive index of plant names started and maintained by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew * ''
Kew Bulletin The ''Kew Bulletin'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed scientific journal on plant and fungal taxonomy and conservation published by Springer Science+Business Media on behalf of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Articles on palynology, cytology, anatomy, ...
'', a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by
Springer Science+Business Media Springer Science+Business Media, commonly known as Springer, is a German multinational publishing company of books, e-books and peer-reviewed journals in science, humanities, technical and medical (STM) publishing. Originally founded in 1842 in ...
on behalf of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew * Kew Gardens (Leases) Act 2019, an Act of Parliament relating to the Gardens *
Kew Herbarium The Kew Herbarium (herbarium code: K) is one of the world's largest and most historically significant herbaria, housed at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in London, England. Established in the 1850s on the ground floor of Hunter House, it has gro ...
* Kew Madagascar Conservation Centre * Tropical Important Plant Areas, a programme in collaboration with
Plantlife International Plantlife is a wild plant conservation charity. , it manages 24 nature reserves around the United Kingdom. HM King Charles III is patron of the charity. History Plantlife was founded in 1989. Its first president was Professor David Bellamy. ...
to identify and protect important plant diversity in tropical countries


References


Sources

*


External links

*
''A Year at Kew'' – BBC documentary behind the scenes at Kew Gardens
(archived 13 February 2005) {{authority control 1759 establishments in England Botanical research institutes Charities based in London Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Exempt charities Herbaria in the United Kingdom Kew, London Non-departmental public bodies of the United Kingdom government Organisations based in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames