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WHAT IS THE CONSORTIUM?

There are around 800 botanic gardens in Europe and in most countries these are linked through national botanic garden networks.

Representatives of the national networks come together in the European Botanic Gardens Consortium, of which BGCI is the convenor.

This Consortium consists of representatives of all EU member countries, with Bulgaria, Croatia, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland, invited to attend meetings as observers.

The Consortium meets twice a year, with meetings being hosted by member gardens.
The role of the Consortium is to facilitate communication between country networks to disseminate shared experiences and issues, and to reduce duplication of effort.
BGCI serves as the secretariat to the consortium

In line with the interests of BGCI, much of the work of the Consortium is focused on wild plant conservation and issues related to the sharing of information and plant resources throughout the European region.

ebgconsortiumindexseminum


Other EBG Projects:

ALIEN PLANTS
Sharing information, and policy, on potentially invasive alien plants in Botanic Gardens

IPEN
The International Plant Exchange Network

PLANT SEARCH
A Database to plants in Cultivation around the world

SEED LISTS
The Pan-European seed-list search system

vert bar THE EUROPEAN BOTANIC GARDENS CONSORTIUM

PlantSearch: creating a catalogue of plants in cultivation in European botanic gardens
Last updated: 26 November 2009

The Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) plant search database allows users to submit and search for plants in living collections all around the world. It gives cross-referenced information with Red Data Lists, plant images, the International Plant Names Index, Crop Wild Relatives, and the Tree Conservation Database. The database is a substantial contribution to Target 8 of the GSPC - telling us how many endangered species of plant are in ex situ collections - but this requires many more gardens to submit their lists.

PlantSearch is of major benefit to the world community of Gardens, and to researchers. At the very least Gardens should submit a list of all their holdings of threatened taxa.

PlantSearch currently holds records for approximately 180,000 taxa, provided by over 700 botanic gardens. The plant records are linked to databases on the threat status and uses of plants – the 1997 and 2006 IUCN Red Lists of threatened plant species, CITES plants, lists of Crop Wild Relatives and medicinal plants and the TROPICOS database. PlantSearch is used as a tool to measure progress towards Target 8 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) ‘60% of threatened plant species in accessible ex situ collections...’.

Data from European botanic gardens in PlantSearch

  • 257 European botanic gardens have so far provided plant lists
  • A total of 407,225 records are recorded for European gardens
  • These correspond to 124,630 taxa
  • 6,218 are considered threatened at the global level
The Consortium hopes to encourage as many European collections as possible to submit their plant-lists The advantages of submitting your plant list will be to:-
  • Find out if your taxa names are spelt correctly and exist on the International Plant Name Index (IPNI)
  • Find out how many rare and threatened plants you have in your collection
  • Find out how many other gardens are cultivating the same taxa
  • Identify crop wild relatives, alpine species and medicinal plants in your collection
The valuable genetic stock of plants already in collections may represent populations that are no longer extant, or provide material for experimental or genetic research. Thus PlantSearch is of major conservation value in that it will ensure:-
  • location of rare and threatened plant species in cultivation around the world
  • specimens do not remain anonymous in collections
  • targetted requests for cultivation information or propagation material reach the right audience


Details and other links

How to upload and query the PlantSearch database (BGCI's webpage).

Explanation of some of the benefits of using the BGCI Plant Search Database (PlantNetwork information sheet)