A National Plant Collection is a registered and documented collection of a group of cultivated plants 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 ...

. National Plant Collections are part of a

plant conservation Conservation biology is the study of the conservation of nature and of Earth's biodiversity with the aim of protecting species, their habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction and the erosion of biotic interactions. It is an i ...

scheme run by Plant Heritage, a registered charity which aims to protect and develop the biological and heritage resource of plants in UK

gardens A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the cultivation, display, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The single feature identifying even the wildest wild garden is ''control''. The garden can incorporate bot ...

. Participating individuals or organisations undertake to collect and conserve living material of a particular group of plants, as well as research its history and cultivation. Collection holders must be members of Plant Heritage, and agree to stringent requirements for labelling, documentation, and

propagation Propagation can refer to: *Chain propagation in a chemical reaction mechanism *Crack propagation, the growth of a crack during the fracture of materials *Propaganda, non-objective information used to further an agenda *Reproduction, and other forms ...

of the collection. They may be individuals,

botanic garden A botanical garden or botanic gardenThe terms ''botanic'' and ''botanical'' and ''garden'' or ''gardens'' are used more-or-less interchangeably, although the word ''botanic'' is generally reserved for the earlier, more traditional gardens. is ...

plant nurseries A nursery is a place where plants are propagated and grown to a desired size. Mostly the plants concerned are for gardening, forestry, or conservation biology, rather than agriculture. They include retail nurseries, which sell to the general ...

, local authority parks, or groups of people holding distributed collections. Some collections are composed of a

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 ...

group, such as a single

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

. Others are defined by a

horticultural Horticulture (from ) is the art and science of growing fruits, vegetables, flowers, trees, shrubs and ornamental plants. Horticulture is commonly associated with the more professional and technical aspects of plant cultivation on a smaller and mo ...

group, such as cultivars with particular foliage characteristics or plants collected by a certain historical figure. There may be multiple collections covering the same plant group, which reduces the risk of rare plants being lost from extreme climatic events. As of October 2023, there are over 700 collections comprising a total of over 95,000 plants.

References

External links

Plant Heritage website
{{Authority control Conservation in the United Kingdom Gardening in the United Kingdom Plant conservation

See also

References

External links