59 | Where knowledge grows
Illustration: Yves Haltner
Where knowledge grows. The Botanic Garden in Berlin makes a significant contribution to scientific biodiversity research with its almost four million herbarium specimens, 50,000 DNA samples, almost 20,000 plants in gardens and greenhouses, and 13,000 collections in the Dahlem Seed Bank. Not to mention the protection of species.
Sources and additional information
Scientists at the Botanic Garden have been working with scientific partner institutions all over the world to create World Flora Online, the digital image of the plants of the Earth. With the dynamic database, scientists are making all 350,000 known land plant species in the world available online for the first time. In the gardens themselves visitors can go from the Alps to Asia to America in half an hour: a distance of 23 kilometers takes them through the whole world of botany.