Question

What is the role of botanical gardens in biosystematics studies?

Answer 1

Botanical gardens are meant for cultivation, collection and preservation. It displays a wide range of plants labelled with their botanical names.

Complete Answer:
The botanical garden is the specialized garden that has the collection of living plants for reference. Plant species in these gardens are labeled and grown for identification purposes and indicating its botanical/scientific name and its family. The famous botanical gardens are at Kew (England).

In India, few of the famous botanical garden are,
- TNAU Botanical Garden, Coimbatore(India).
- The Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden, Kolkata ( India).
- Indian Botanical Garden, Howrah (India).
- National Botanical Research Institute, Lucknow (India).
- Lalbagh Botanical Gardens, Bangalore (India).
- Government Botanical Gardens, Ooty (India).

Universities run botanical gardens for scientific research programmes in plant taxonomy. Their major role is to maintain documented collection of living plants for the purpose of conservation, display, scientific research and education.

Horticulture and cultivation skills allow us to grow plants that might be lost in nature, which means that species diversity can be conserved in the gardens, but also allows us to consider restoration and rehabilitation of degraded habitats.

Note: Botanical gardens are an example of taxonomical aids. Other types of taxonomical aids are,
1. Herbarium - It stores a collection of preserved plant species in forms of herbarium sheets.
2. Museum - They are commonly found in schools and colleges. The plant and animal species are dried and preserved in glass jars using appropriate preservatives.
3. Key - In this, the plants and animals are recognized on the basis of contrasting characteristics.