Temperate: key achievements 2006 - 2011

The Temperate Team studies a prioritised set of plant families and maintains collaborative links with a variety of projects and botanical institutions throughout temperate regions of the world.

Overview

The Temperate Team is responsible for all plant-related matters concerning temperate regions of the world (incl. Europe & British Isles, The Middle East and southwestern Asia, Russia, India, China, Mongolia, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Australia, USA and Canada). The Temperate Team deals with all curatorial matters of specific plant families, herbarium loan requests (both material and images), plant related queries, research visitors, students, research projects (incl. floristic research, flora writing, collaborative fieldwork, vegetation surveys, teaching) and horticultural taxonomy in the temperate regions.

The Temperate Team has been and is actively involved in contributing to regional floras: Flora of China, Flora of Pakistan, Flora of Iraq, Flora of Oman and Flora of Tropical East Africa (for details, please see project reports). In addition an up-to-date checklist of the plants of the Arabian Peninsula and a regional checklist of the halophytes of southwestern Asia is under preparation.

Collaborative fieldwork is an integral part of our research. Through links with botanical institutions around the world we are able to contribute to floristic research and enrich Kew’s Herbarium and living collections, facilitating global access to plant biodiversity information. Recent fieldwork includes an expedition to southwestern China to collect Caprifoliaceae in collaboration with the Kunming Institute of Botany, an expedition to collect the same in Kyrgyzstan in collaboration with the National Academy of Sciences in Kyrgyzstan and to the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt ,in collaboration with Helwan University in Egypt.

The Team ia also involved in several consultancies in the Arabian Peninsula and Jordan. These projects include vegetation surveys and restoration of degraded habitats, working closely with CLCE, particularly the Millennium Seed Bank. The Team are also involved in providing herbarium design and training staff in herbarium work.

Through horticultural taxonomy, the Temperate team provides a vital link between the Herbarium and living collections in the Gardens. Our aim is to ensure the highest taxonomic standards of naming for Kew’s collections through an ongoing process of verification.

With our honorary research associate, the Team has contributed significantly towards the World IUCN Red List Assessment of conifers and have databased Kew’s holdings of all herbarium specimens of conifers.

The Temperate Team contributes heavily to Breathing Planet Programme strategy 1 and less to 2, 3, 4 and 5. We hope to become more involved in strategy 6.

Conferences and workshops

2011 - International Conference of Global Change in the Mediterranean, 4-7 May, Edremit, Turkey. Keynote speaker: Traditional medicine and climate change.
2010 - IUCN Red List Re-assessment of Conifers. Workshop held in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China:
2009 International workshop on Urbanisation, Land use, Land degradation and Environment, 29 September–2 October. Paper presented: Restoring Saline Habitats: Identification and Name Changes in Halophytes of the Arabian Peninsula.
2008 - Analysing and documenting the biodiversity in the Middle East, 20–23 October, Aqaba, Jordan. Paper presented: Floristic diversity of the Sultanate of Oman.
2007 - VI Plant Life of Southwest Asia Symposium, 25–29 June, Eskisehir, Turkey. Plenary talk: Conservation in developing countries.
2007 - 18^th AETFAT Congress, 26 February–2 March, Yaoundé, Cameroon. Distribution and conservation of the Scrophulariaceae in eastern Africa.