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Other European-wide activities in Botanic Gardens
 Last updated: 5 December 2011

  • ENSCONET
    The European Native Seed Conservation Network (ENSCONET) co-ordinates the seed conservation activities of over twenty European seed banks, botanical gardens and other institutes involved in plant conservation. One of the main purposes of ENSCONET is to improve quality, co-ordination and integration of European seed conservation practise, policy and research for native seed plant species

  • RIBES
    Thirteen botanic gardens (Pavia, Hanbury, Trento, Padua, Pisa, Livorno, Ancona, Viterbo, Roma, Majella, Catania, Palermo, Cagliari) belong to the RIBES network (the Italian seed bank network) and are actively engaged in seed collection and their long term safe storage for conservation purposes. They operate in an integrated way on a national basis and currently hold accessions belonging to 371 nationally threatened species out of the 1020 species listed in the latest official atlas of threatened species. These gardens plan to target additional 290 species of this list for the near future. Some gardens are currently undertaking plant propagation and reintroduction activities on case studies as detailed below. Each garden has many specific local activities and projects, among the others, Cagliari Botanic Garden now stores 1300 accessions belonging to 600 species being 80% of the locally threatened flora of Sardinia. Reintroduction projects are in progress for 20 species. Catania Botanic Garden now stores, 533 species 97 of which are local endemics, in the native flora section of the garden Zelkova sicula Pasquale, Garfi & Quezel is in cultivation

  • INQUIRE
    INQUIRE is a pan-European education project, which aims to reinvigorate inquiry-based science education (IBSE) in formal and informal education systems (specifically Learning Outside the Classroom sites) throughout Europe.
    Designed to reflect how students actually learn, IBSE also engages them in the process of scientific inquiry. Increasingly it is seen as key to developing their scientific literacy, enhancing their understanding of scientific concepts and heightening their appreciation of how science works.



  • European Red Lists of Vascular Plants
    Conserving Europe’s threatened plants: Progress towards Target 8 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, Sharrock, S. and Jones, M. (BGCI, 2009) European National Red Lists were compiled from 28 European countries, yielding 11,475 taxa. Taxa known to be threatened throughout their range were extracted, a total of 1,917 taxa (species and subspecies). Gaps where National Red Lists were not available include Portugal, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro.








    European Red List of Vascular Plants, Bilz, M., Kell, S.P., Maxted, N. and Lansdown, R.V. (IUCN, 2011) This is the first Europe-wide assessment of Vascular Plants. The survey indicates that at least 467 of the 1,826 species reviewed are threatened. Target 8 of the GSPC calls for 60% of threatened plants in ex situ collections and 10% of them in recovery programmes by 2010. Since there was no European Red List of Plants, there has previously been no means to measure progress towards this target. Now we have this list, it gives us some means to prioritise actions and ensure the 60% target is met by 2010.






  • European Plant Conservation Strategy
    Council of Europe and Planta Europa (2001)
    This joint Council of Europe and Planta Europa European Plant Conservation Strategy was developed at the third Planta Europa conference for the conservation of wild plants held 23-28 June 2001 in Průhonice in the Czech Republic. The Strategy is available in English, French, Dutch, Greek, Italian, Serbo-Croat, Spanish and Russian.







  • European Wild Flora Resources
    A number of Euroepan countries have excellent on-line resources to their vascular floras.
    This page lists a number of websites but is not intended to be exhaustive.


  • PLANTSEARCH
    This BGCI project comprises a database compiled from lists of living collections submitted by the world's botanic gardens. The database presently includes over 575,000 records.