Plant science research in botanic gardens.

Botanic gardens have great and longstanding strengths in the exploration and documentation of plant diversity – including systematics, horticultural science, and most recently molecular phylogenetics. However, in terms of mainstream plant science today, with its dominantly reductionist focus, research in botanic gardens is often neglected. Using the conventional criteria few botanic garden plant scientists rank as leaders in the plant science community and the work undertaken in botanical gardens is often viewed as peripheral to current societal problems and “cutting-edge” research.