The Royal Botanic Gardens

The Royal Botanic Garden maintains one of the world’s largest collections of living plants. The garden at Inverleith in Edinburgh, together with the Specialist Gardens of Younger, Logan and Dawyck, contains representatives of most families of flowering plants, conifers, cycads, ferns and their allies - nearly 17,000 species (about 6% of the world’s flowering plants) from across the globe.

These Living Collections have been built up over a period of more than 300 years, and are continually being augmented. They are widely used in the Garden’s research, conservation and education programmes.

The Garden’s collections do not consist solely of living plants. The internationally renowned Herbarium houses some 2 million preserved plant specimens covering the whole of the plant kingdom. Plants from the Sino-Himalayan region, tropical south-east Asia, south-west Asia (especially Turkey and Arabia), Brazil and Scotland are particularly well represented. Research programmes exploit these regional strengths and have in turn enriched the collections in certain taxonomic groups.

The Library of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh - the largest collection of botanical works in northern Britain - specialises in the literature of systematic botany, but also holds publications on related areas. The main stock includes holdings of about 1500 current scientific journals, as well as about 75,000 books, including many early printed works. The Library also houses an archive collection and several thousand botanical illustrations.

Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
20A Inverleith Row
Edinburgh
EH3 5LR

For more information: www.rbge.org.uk