Please note:

The Go Wild Festival ran at Kew and Wakehurst place for the summer of 2003. As such many of the festival features can no longer be seen in the gardens, but this website has been kept to give visitors access to wealth of information developed to support the festival.

Don't forget to check out the latest events in the gardens. Find out more......

Conservation Science

Wild Fact 8: There are around 50 species of orchid growing in the wild in the UK today. A third of these are thought to be threatened, several species have populations of less than 100 individual plants.

Wild Science: Orchid conservation >>>

Wild Fact 10: Experts believe that more than 10% of the world’s plant species are in constant danger of extinction. Conservation is therefore the cornerstone of the work of Botanic Gardens around the world.

Wild Fact 11: Growing new plants from small pieces of the original plant or from seeds in the laboratory is called ‘Micropropagation’ and is a vital part of plant conservation programmes as large numbers of plants can be grown in very small space.

Wild Science: Micropropagation >>>

Wild Fact 26: Britain is home to 53 native species of orchid. Two of these (Summer Lady's Tresses, Spiranthes aestivalis, and the Ghost Orchid, Epipogium aphyllum) have become nationally extinct in the past 35 years. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew are actively involved in conserving these wonderful plants through ex-situ conservation and support of re-introduction programmes. The Lady's Slipper Orchid (Cypripedium calceolus) is the best known of these but we are also working on the Fen Orchid (Liparis loeselii) and many others. (source: New Atlas of the British & Irish Flora, 2002)

Wild Science: Orchid Conservation at Kew >>>

External link: New Atlas of the British and Irish Flora >>>

Wild Fact 27: The Millennium Seed Bank at Wakehurst Place holds seed collections of 97% of native plant species from the United Kingdom.

See also: Millennium Seed Bank Project >>>

Wild Fact 28: Some species can only be effectively conserved outside of their natural habitat (ex-situ) through the freezing of tissue cultures (cryopreservation). A unique project at Kew is storing UK mosses. This is the same method used to store human eggs and sperm for use in in-vitro fertilization.

Wild Science: Micropropagation >>>

Wild Fact 29: When bulking up ex-situ populations of rare species and choosing individuals for inclusion in a re-introduction scheme, it is desirable to conserve as much native genetic diversity as possible, while excluding genes from non-local populations. DNA fingerprinting methods can be used to identify the progeny of potential parent plants to be used in artificial breeding programmes. These are the same methods that may be used to identify criminal suspects. (Conservation Genetics link)

Wild Science: Micropropagation >>>

Wild Fact 30: Ecologists need to be able to identify plant species in order to assess the state of a studied habitat. Staff at Kew are actively involved in the creation of identification tools for ecologists, including checklists and identification guides. The national 'Checklist of Basidiomycetes' (mushrooms to you or I) is due for publication this year.

Wild Science: Taxonomy >>>

What is biodiversity?
What is a native plant?
Links