Search the Living Collection
How to search
Simply enter the scientific or common name here and click "Search Catalogue".
Enter one or more words from the scientific or common name (excluding authorities or cultivar indicators eg. cv).
- Entries can be either upper or lower case.
- Either * or ] can be used as wildcard characters at the end of any search values.
For example, to search for all values starting with Gent, enter gent* or gent] - Multiple search criteria should be separated by a comma.
For example, to look up both Gentiana acaulis L. and Rhododendron lepidotum Wall. ex G. Don, enter gentiana acaulis, rhododendron lepidotum
In Search of Plants
The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh grows, in its four gardens, over 15,000 species of plants, the second richest collection of plant species in the world. In order to manage this enormous Living Collection, it keeps a computer database of the species it holds, and where they are growing. A hard-copy, the Catalogue of Plants, is published periodically (click here for details).
Moratorium on requests for samples from the collections
With its rich collection of living plants and an important herbarium RBGE receives many requests from scientists and horticulturalists from around the world for samples for research – usually for DNA sequencing, or as seed. Since 2000, we have been happy to approve and meet these requests where they are clearly for pure research purposes, and where we have no restrictions on the material requested material to supplying third parties. Meticulous records are kept of all the material sent out and, at the same time, we always make a voucher specimen of any material requested from the living collections, to ensure that there is a permanent record if the plant were lost. The number of requests has been increasing and was reaching a point where it was taking all one person’s time to process these requests. At the same time, staff at RBGE have been collecting many more DNA samples as a routine part of their fieldwork, and the backlog of DNA samples was desperately in need of curation. As a result we have placed a temporary 12 month moratorium on access to samples from RBGE, while we complete curation of the DNA samples and review our request procedure. For established collaborative research projects with RBGE staff we will continue to provide material.
Conditions of use of plant material
Conditions of use of material, derived from the Living Collections of RBGE (CBD form) can be downloaded in the following formats:
PDF | HTML | Rich Text Format.