An email alert from the good folks at Botanical Gardens Conservation International (BCGI) tells me they have spruced up their website. And the website in turns reminds me that May 18th is Plant Conservation Day, and we should probably do something about that here.
But the main reason for the alert is to draw our attention to two online databases: PlantSearch and GardenSearch.
PlantSearch enables users to locate rare or threatened plant species in cultivation around the world. This database is compiled from lists of living collections submitted to BGCI by the world’s botanic gardens. The database presently includes over 575,000 records representing almost 180,000 taxa from 692 gardens.
And you can find a garden anywhere in the world using GardenSearch, with over 2658 records. We’re working on an interactive botanic garden mapping tool too…
There’s a filter for crop wild relatives. Seems to me the botanical gardens community may be a bit further down the road out of database hell than the world’s genebanks.