Q.Write the role of Botanical garden.

Botanical gardens are living, curated collections of plants that function as centres for conservation, research, education, and public recreation, and they often maintain an attached herbarium documenting the identified species.

A botanical garden is an institution that maintains a documented, scientifically arranged collection of living plants, usually grown for the purposes of research, conservation, display, and education. Its principal roles include:

1. Conservation (ex-situ): Botanical gardens conserve plant species outside their natural habitat, which is especially crucial for rare, endangered, or threatened species that might otherwise be lost; they act as a genetic reservoir/germplasm bank preserving plant diversity.

2. Research: They provide living material for taxonomic identification, classification studies, plant physiology, breeding programmes, and other botanical research; specimens grown here are often used to prepare herbarium sheets for identification and permanent record.

3. Education: Botanical gardens serve as an important teaching resource for botany students (and biology students in general), allowing direct observation of plant diversity, morphology, and classification that cannot be gained from textbooks alone.

4. Public awareness and recreation: They are open to the public, raising awareness about plant diversity, conservation, and the importance of plants, while also serving as recreational green spaces.

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