The Jardín Botánico Francisco Javier Clavijero participating in the World Botanic Gardens Exhibition, Beijing, China

I was walking down the Anaconda Trail at the Madre Selva Biological Station with botanist Rodolfo Vasquez when he suddenly stopped, stared at the bark of a 120-foot tree, and started searching the ground. Odd behavior? Perhaps, but when you're with Peru's top field botanist, odd behavior is forgivable, since it means that something interesting is probably afoot.

One in five of Germany’s plant species could lose parts of their current range, a study by scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the French Laboratoire d’Ecologie Alpine reveals.

The 2nd World Botanic Gardens Scientific Congress took place from 29 June to 4 July, hosted by the Botanic Garden of the Technical University of Delft, Netherlands.

A new study estimates the number of trees that will go extinct in the Brazilian Amazon due to habitat loss.

After establishing his ingenious classification system in 1735, Carl Linnaeus, the greatest naturalist of his era, sent young and eager followers to all parts of the world to help him in the goal of collecting and cataloguing the world's species. It was a project unlike any before; Swedish naturalists, often referred to as Linnaeus's apostles, roamed as far as Japan, South America, Australia, and the Arctic with the same goal in mind—describing species according to Linnaeus's system.

Question – how do you move 50,000 plants, including many rare and endangered species from two temporary facilities to a cutting-edge nursery in the desert? This is the challenge that the horticultural team at the Oman Botanic Garden has had to find an answer for.

The Everett Children’s Adventure Garden in New York’s Botanical Garden has turned 10 years old. Opened in May 1998, becoming the first indoor-outdoor plant museum for children and adults in the United States. In the proceeding 10 years nearly 1.5 million children have visited the garden.

With the theme of “Homes for plants, Gardens for humans,” the world botanic gardens exhibition is co-organized by BGCI，Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Committee and Popular Science Network of Botanic Gardens, CAS . The exhibition officially opened to the public on 1st Aug.2008.

The World Botanic Gardens Exhibition, co-organised by BGCI，the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Botanic Gardens and Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Committee will be displayed at the Science and Technology Park near the Olympic Village from 1st August to 8th September 2008.

Oman Botanic Garden shifts 50,000 plants to their new home!

'Access and Benefit Sharing - Good Practice for Academic Research on Genetic Resources', published by the Swiss Academy of Sciences in 2006, is now available in French and Spanish.

The Global Cactus Assessment (GCA) is evaluating the conservation status of the world’s cacti.

Funded by the Swedish International Biodiversity Programme (SwedBio), BGCI is launching a new project to save wild plants for food and medicine in Madagascar and Uganda.

A successful community based cactus conservation project has been set up in Queretaro State in Mexico. The project, involving local school children, was set up in response to the identification of five threatened species of cactus in the semi-arid Bellavista del Rio region of Queretaro.

Nothing beats nature for finding drug leads: more than 60% of cancer therapeutics on the market or in testing are natural product based. Yet plant extinctions are occuring at a rate unmatched in geological history - and with them go the symbiotic organisms they host and the animal life they support.

The Chicago Botanic Garden will no longer sell bottled water. As part of its efforts on sustainability and energy conservation it was decided that only Chicago tap water would be served to the Gardens visitors. The change was implemented on June 5th in conjunction with World Environment Day.

No End to the Banana is an exhibition travelling the world that explores the diversity of bananas.

A new £1.6m state-of-the art visitor centre has opened its doors at Dawyck Botanic Garden (Scotland), one of four botanic gardens of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

The 9th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was held in Bonn from 19 – 30 May. Over 4,000 participants from 191 countries and a host of governmental and non-governmental organisations, including BGCI of course, were represented.