Q.Which is the largest Botanical Garden in the world ? Name a few well known Botanical Gardens in India.

A botanical garden is specifically a centre for collecting and maintaining plants through their various stages of living - distinct from an ordinary ornamental garden. Gardens for aesthetic/religious/status purposes go back to antiquity (the Hanging Gardens of Babylon), but the first garden built for SCIENCE and education was Theophrastus's public-lecture-hall garden at Athens; the first modern botanical garden was established by Luca Ghini (1490-1556) at Pisa, Italy, in 1544. About 1,800 botanical gardens and arboreta exist worldwide today. Their roles: (1) aesthetic value drawing large numbers of visitors (e.g. the Great Banyan Tree at Kolkata's Indian Botanical Garden); (2) supplying a wide range of taxonomic material for botanical research; (3) self-instruction/demonstration; (4) integrating diverse fields - Anatomy, Embryology, Phytochemistry, Cytology, Physiology, Ecology; (5) acting as a conservation centre for diversity and for rare/endangered species (ex-situ conservation); (6) offering an annual list of available species with free seed exchange; (7) sharing propagation-method information and …