The Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew By Wanda Harris
Kew Gardens, covering over 300 acres, are located on east side of the Thames River on poor soil that is mainly sand and gravel. This is the result of an accident of history. Originally the land served as a royal hunting lodge. Princess Augusta initiated a botanical garden in 1759. Very few plants from that time have survived to the present, although an ancient Ginko biloba still grows there. Her son, George III, inherited her interest and had capable helpers. This was the time of "voyages of discovery" which impacted the landscape at Kew. Chinese gardens were installed and several buildings of Classical, Gothic, Chinese, and Islamic styles were erected. Just as Kew reflects this period, it continues to be a mirror of the time to the present day. During the Industrial revolution, state-of-the-art glass houses were built. In 1844, the Palm House was erected. It provided seed for the colonies. Currently it is the world's largest surviving Victorian glass structure.
Palm House, built in 1848.
Kew has focused on plants as a basis of the economy. Research and plant stock has been the basis of industry such as rubber trees of the East. Kew's quinine plants were the first sent to India. Pineapples, coffee, bananas, and breadfruit traveled from Kew to many parts of the Commonwealth. The Wardian case, a small portable greenhouse, was invented at Kew so that plant could travel long distances and could be propagated in various climates. It is this emphasis that is apparent in the Economic Botany Collections of the museums. These were established by the first official Director of the gardens, 1841 to 1865, Sir William Hooker. Sir William's rationale:was "to render great service, not only to the scientific botanist, but to the merchant, the manufacturer, the physician, the chemist, the druggist, the dyer, the carpenter and the cabinet-maker and artisans of every description, who might here find the raw materials employed in their several professions correctly named".
The Polynesian Gazette, newspaper made of paper mulberry, Brousonetia papyrifera
Lace collar from milkweed
When the gardens were first established coincided with the interest in taxonomy. The work of Carl Linnaeus, often called the Father of Taxonomy, was becoming accepted. His system for naming, ranking, and classifying organisms is still in wide use today (with many changes). At the time, training in botany was part of the medical curriculum, for every doctor had to prepare and prescribe drugs derived from medicinal plants. This became a major undertaking of the directors of the gardens. Today this is manifested in the on-line database, Kew Record of Taxonomic Literature, a database of references relevant to the taxonomy of flowering plants, gymnosperms and ferns.
Joseph Hooker
After his death, Sir William Hooker's private library was purchased, in 1867, to form the nucleus of the present collections. Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, William's son, worked under his father and became director. The importance of his work was his forming Kew as a center of scientific research, especially in the classification and distribution of plants throughout the world.
The gardens continue to install greenhouses and other buildings to support the programs. The public is mostly aware of the "Gardens of Pleasure" which bloom all year. Beyond this is the living botanical collections. These constitute the world's most comprehensive collections of living specimens maintained for scientific study. There are representatives from almost every habitat. In 1981, a new Alpine House was built, all in glass with numerous ventilators, and surrounded with a water-filled moat. This maintains constant dry and cool conditions for high mountain plants. The original Alpine House was built in 1887.
Today the Gardens include four Economic Museums, 25 glass houses, Temperate House, Herbarium, Jodrell Laboratory, various libraries, and other buildings.
The Gardens, under the guidance of the various directors, has kept scientific research as its main focus. Combining research, collecting seed and plant material, and propagating plants of the world, while archiving and documenting, puts Kew at the forefront of the world community in recognizing the importance of maintaining biodiversity of plants.
The distribution of living plants is a daily affair at Kew. In 1980, materials were sent to forty-seven countries. Seed collection and plant hunting still continues with new varieties of plants still being discovered. Field studies help to decide the taxonomy and biology of plants. Sometimes the pollination methods of a plant can only be observed in the field. The Kew specialist makes fuller notes and better observations than a casual collector. Photography, drawing, and knowledge of preservation is essential. Some materials may be dried while others need to be preserved in alcohol. The Royal Botanic Gardens has an extensive collection of photographic transparencies relating to fieldwork, artifacts and other aspects of economic botany.
The archives contain many collections of private papers of botanists including material many famous scientists: John Ray (1627-1705), Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820), Charles Darwin (1809-1882), Richard Spruce (1817-1893), Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), Henry Nicholas Ridley (1855-1956), Isaac Henry Burkill (1870-1965), and Richard Eric Holttum (1895-1990). Archives include many subject-orientated collections of papers relating to previous Kew projects, for example on quinine or wartime medicines.
The Kew Library Tankerville Collection contains 648 original color drawings, mostly made at Kew, by distinguished botanical artists such as Meen, Ehret, Bauer, and Sowerby, with some dating back to 1787. The oldest printed book in the library dates to 1471 is in Latin and is on the subject of gardening methods. The oldest book in English is from 1526. Examples of recent major collection purchases include the Michael Hoog Collection of Tulipa drawings by Mary Grierson (purchased at auction in 1992),
The Herbarium Seed Collections contains 20,000 seed types. The Millennium Seed Bank Project is an international collaborative plant conservation initiative. This worldwide effort aims to safeguard 24,000 plant species from around the globe against extinction, while the Economic Botany Collections contain over 78,000 plant specimens and plant products illustrating uses of plants .
The living collection of Kew Gardens, comprising some 70,000 specimens of 30,000 diffferent taxa.
Herbarium Catalogue includes label data from dry and spirit specimens of flowering plants, ferns and gymnosperms held in Kew's herbarium. Information recorded includes the plant name, collection and determination data, locality and type status. Digitization is proceeding and as of September 2003 the database consisted of c77,000 mainly spirit specimens.
The very existence of life on earth depends upon plants - not just on sheer numbers but also on the diversity of species. Scientists believe that as much as a quarter of all plant species could disappear within the next 50 years. Once a species becomes extinct its unique properties are lost forever. On 3 July 2003 the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew was officially inscribed on the list of World Heritage Sites by UNESCO.
The mission of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is to enable better management of the Earth's environment by increasing knowledge and understanding of the plant and fungal kingdoms - the basis of life on earth.
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Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew
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