Living Collections Management at Missouri Botanical Garden

Alanna Slack

Living Collections Development Coordinator

Missouri Botanical Garden

What is a Botanical Garden?

“Botanic gardens are institutions holding documented collections of

living plants for the purposes of scientific research, conservation,

display, and education”

-International Agenda for Botanic Gardens in Conservation

What are living collections?

A group of plants grown for a defined purpose

• Geographical

• Taxonomic

• Thematic

• Ecological

Why do we have living collections?

• To focus the expertise and resources needed to support those plants

• To meet the needs for research and conservation

• To connect our visitors with plants

Why are plant records important?

• Our collections serve many purposes, including horticulture trials, supporting research projects, conservation, and education

• Conservation is the most important aspect of our collections

• If living plant collections are to play a part in conservation, they have to achieve the highest standards of record-keeping

Documentation - Collection

Accessioning New Plants When plants and seeds arrive at the Garden, they are accessioned. This is the process of assigning a number to a plant that allows it to be tracked.

Accessioning New Plants After a number is assigned, collection data is entered into a database and the plant is labeled with an ID tag.

The Living Collections Management System

http://www.livingcollections.org/mobot

The Living Collections Management System

http://www.livingcollections.org/mobot

How do we use the LCMS?

1. Propagation Trials The Garden’s on-site nursery grows plant material that was collected in the wild. Some plants are new to cultivation, so our staff perform trials to document propagation and cultivation protocols. This process builds knowledge that is used to develop conservation strategies for rare plants and also provides information to home gardeners.

Documentation - propagation

e.g. inventories

2. Collections Management

3. Collections Maintenance e.g. tree canopy assessment

4. Weed Risk Assessment

5. Collections Assessment

6. Collections Development

Assemble datasets for gap analysis and

collections development