Plants for science

The Botanical Garden is part of the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Vienna. The Garden collaborates particularly closely with the neighbouring Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research. The Botanical Garden cultivates a wide variety of plant species for the Department's researchers. These plants are used, for example, to analyse their phylogenetic relationships. When the research plants bloom in the Garden's greenhouses, their shape, scent and other flower characteristics are studied in order to understand their evolutionary development.

New plant species have been and continue to be described in the Botanical Garden, for example the Madagascan orchid Cynorkis christae, which greenhouse manager Anton Sieder discovered in Madagascar and which was subsequently named after his wife.

The cultivation of plants is particularly important for students of the degree programme in Biology and the teacher education programme in Biology. Thousands of plant parts pass through the hands of students every year, who use these objects to familiarise themselves with the structure and shape of plants and learn to distinguish between different plant species. This knowledge forms the basis for a future career in research and for teaching biology in schools.