ANBG Plant Science Group December Technical Talk

Title: Keeping track of the kids: lineage matters!

Speaker: Dr Rosemary Purdie, Honorary Living Collections Botanist, ANBG

Place: Theatrette, ANBG

Summary: Since its early days of operation, ANBG has had a very strong scientific focus to its activities. This focus includes plants being displayed in the Gardens in a scientific way, being available for study and research, knowing the parent of each plant, and ensuring that all plants cultivated from the wild are represented in the herbarium by a voucher specimen. From the start, keeping records of the plants has been just as important as growing them. With the Gardens' increased emphasis over the last couple of decades on helping to conserve threatened plant species, some of these principles and record-keeping have become even more important. In this talk, I'll discuss how collecting requirements for propagation material have changed to meet 'best practice conservation', and how the ANBG's Integrated Botanical Information System (IBIS) helps staff keep track of each plant, its lineage and its voucher in the Australian National Herbarium.