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29-596: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs . An internationally important botanical research and education institution, it employs 1,100 staff. Its board of trustees is chaired by Dame Amelia Fawcett . The organisation manages botanic gardens at Kew in Richmond upon Thames in south-west London, and at Wakehurst ,

58-693: A National Trust property in Sussex which is home to the internationally important Millennium Seed Bank , whose scientists work with partner organisations in more than 95 countries. Kew, jointly with the Forestry Commission , founded Bedgebury National Pinetum in Kent in 1923, specialising in growing conifers . In 1994, the Castle Howard Arboretum Trust, which runs the Yorkshire Arboretum ,

87-674: A non-ministerial government department being at a remove from both ministers and any elected assembly or parliament. Typically an NDPB would be established under statute and be accountable to Parliament rather than to His Majesty's Government . This arrangement allows more financial independence since the government is obliged to provide funding to meet statutory obligations. NDPBs are sometimes referred to as quangos . However, this term originally referred to quasi-NGOs bodies that are, at least ostensibly, non-government organisations , but nonetheless perform governmental functions. The backronym "quasi-autonomous national government organization"

116-400: A fifth category: NHS bodies . These bodies consist of boards which advise ministers on particular policy areas. They are often supported by a small secretariat from the parent department, and any expenditure is paid for by that department. These bodies usually deliver a particular public service and are overseen by a board rather than ministers. Appointments are made by ministers following

145-554: A lack of widespread consensus within the scientific community for extended periods. The continual publication of new data and diverse opinions plays a crucial role in facilitating adjustments and ultimately reaching a consensus over time. The naming of families is codified by various international bodies using the following suffixes: The taxonomic term familia was first used by French botanist Pierre Magnol in his Prodromus historiae generalis plantarum, in quo familiae plantarum per tabulas disponuntur (1689) where he called

174-599: A role in plant conservation. Kew is governed by a board of trustees which comprises a chairman and eleven members. Ten members and the chairman are appointed by the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs . His Majesty the King appoints his own trustee on the recommendation of the Secretary of State. As of 2024 the Board members are: More than 470 scientists work for

203-589: Is a nomenclatural listing of all published taxonomic plant names including new species, new combinations and new names at rank of botanical family down to infraspecific. It provides data for other related projects including Tropicos and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility ( GBIF ). Information and key to flowering plants of the Neotropics (tropical South and Central America). The World Checklist of Selected Plant Families (WCSP)

232-547: Is a register of accepted scientific names and synonyms of 200 selected seed plant families. WCSP is widely used, and most authoritative web resources on plants use it as their basis. The World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP) includes all known vascular plant species ( flowering plants , conifers , ferns , clubmosses , and firmosses ). It is derived from the WCSP and the IPNI and therefore only includes names found in those databases. It

261-499: Is commonly referred to as the "walnut family". The delineation of what constitutes a family— or whether a described family should be acknowledged— is established and decided upon by active taxonomists . There are not strict regulations for outlining or acknowledging a family, yet in the realm of plants, these classifications often rely on both the vegetative and reproductive characteristics of plant species. Taxonomists frequently hold varying perspectives on these descriptions, leading to

290-480: Is one of the eight major hierarchical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy . It is classified between order and genus . A family may be divided into subfamilies , which are intermediate ranks between the ranks of family and genus. The official family names are Latin in origin; however, popular names are often used: for example, walnut trees and hickory trees belong to the family Juglandaceae , but that family

319-596: Is the taxonomic database for Plants of the World Online. Since WCSP includes only selected families, WCVP will seek to complete the process. A checklist of 40,292 species, including nine non-plant taxa (e.g. nostoc , forkweed , brown algae ), compiled from multiple pre-existing datasets. Kew also cooperated with the Missouri Botanical Garden and other international bodies in The Plant List (TPL). Unlike

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348-505: Is used in this usage which is normally pejorative. In March 2009 there were nearly 800 public bodies that were sponsored by the UK Government. This total included 198 executive NDPBs, 410 advisory bodies, 33 tribunals, 21 public corporations, the Bank of England , 2 public broadcasting authorities and 23 NHS bodies. However, the classification is conservative and does not include bodies that are

377-657: The Index Kewensis , a project which began in the 19th century to provide an "Index to the Names and Authorities of all known flowering plants and their countries". The Harvard University Herbaria and the Australian National Herbarium co-operate with Kew in the IPNI database, which was launched in its present form in 1999 to produce an authoritative source of information on botanical nomenclature including publication details of seed plants, ferns and lycophytes . It

406-624: The Conservatives' complacency in power in the 1990s, presented much material interpreted as evidence of questionable government practices. This concern led to the formation of a Committee on Standards in Public Life (the Nolan Committee) which first reported in 1995 and recommended the creation of a "public appointments commissioner" to make sure that appropriate standards were met in the appointment of members of NDPBs. The Government accepted

435-622: The Code of Practice of the Commissioner for Public Appointments . They employ their own staff and allocate their own budgets. These bodies have jurisdiction over an area of the law . They are coordinated by His Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service , an executive agency of the Ministry of Justice , and supervised by the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council , itself an NDPB sponsored by

464-399: The IPNI, it provides information on which names are currently accepted. The Plant List is an Internet encyclopedia project which was launched in 2010 to compile a comprehensive list of botanical nomenclature . The Plant List has 1,064,035 scientific plant names of species rank of which 350,699 are accepted species names. In addition, the list has 642 plant families and 17,020 plant genera. It

493-551: The Ministry of Justice. These bodies were formerly known as "boards of visitors" and are responsible for the state of prisons, their administration, and the treatment of prisoners. The Home Office is responsible for their costs and has to note all expenses. NDPB differ from executive agencies as they are not created to carry out ministerial orders or policy, instead they are more or less self-determining and enjoy greater independence. They are also not directly part of government like

522-648: The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The Director of Science is Alexandre Antonelli . The Deputy Directors are Elizabeth Gardner, Paul Kersey and Monique Simmonds . Kew Science staff include those of the Kew Madagascar Conservation Centre . The scientific staff at Kew maintain a variety of plant and fungal data and digital resources, including: Plants of the World Online is an online database launched in March 2017 as one of nine strategic outputs with

551-660: The UK's Conservative-Liberal coalition published a review of NDPBs recommending closure or merger of nearly two hundred bodies, and the transfer of others to the private sector. This process was colloquially termed the "bonfire of the quangos". NDPBs are classified under code S.13112 of the European System of Accounts (ESA.95). However, Statistics UK does not break out the detail for these bodies and they are consolidated into General Government (S.1311). Family (biology) Family ( Latin : familia , pl. : familiae )

580-468: The UK. According to the Cabinet Office their total expenditure for the financial year 2005–06 was £167 billion. As of March 2020, there were 237 non-departmental public bodies. Critics argued that the system was open to abuse as most NDPBs had their members directly appointed by government ministers without an election or consultation with the people. The press , critical of what was perceived as

609-530: The family as a rank intermediate between order and genus was introduced by Pierre André Latreille in his Précis des caractères génériques des insectes, disposés dans un ordre naturel (1796). He used families (some of them were not named) in some but not in all his orders of "insects" (which then included all arthropods ). In nineteenth-century works such as the Prodromus of Augustin Pyramus de Candolle and

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638-661: The recommendation, and the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments was established in November 1995. While in opposition, the Labour Party promised to reduce the number and power of NDPBs. The use of NDPBs continued under the Labour government in office from 1997 to 2010, though the political controversy associated with NDPBs in the mid-1990s for the most part died away. In 2010

667-533: The responsibility of devolved government , various lower tier boards (including a considerable number within the NHS), and also other boards operating in the public sector (e.g. school governors and police authorities). These appointed bodies performed a large variety of tasks, for example health trusts , or the Welsh Development Agency , and by 1992 were responsible for some 25% of all government expenditure in

696-483: The seed bank. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew states that its mission is to apply scientific discovery and research to fully develop the information about and potential uses of plants and fungi. A conference held in 1976 by the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew was important as it established a co-ordinating body in order to determine which threatened plants are in cultivation and where they are located which played

725-567: The seventy-six groups of plants he recognised in his tables families ( familiae ). The concept of rank at that time was not yet settled, and in the preface to the Prodromus Magnol spoke of uniting his families into larger genera , which is far from how the term is used today. In his work Philosophia Botanica published in 1751, Carl Linnaeus employed the term familia to categorize significant plant groups such as trees , herbs , ferns , palms , and so on. Notably, he restricted

754-473: The ultimate aim being "to enable users to access information on all the world's known seed-bearing plants by 2020". It links taxonomic data with images from the collection, to provide a single point of access with information on identification, distribution, traits, conservation, molecular phylogenies and uses. In addition it serves as a backbone for global resources such as World Flora Online . The International Plant Names Index (IPNI) includes information from

783-541: The use of this term solely within the book's morphological section, where he delved into discussions regarding the vegetative and generative aspects of plants. Subsequently, in French botanical publications, from Michel Adanson 's Familles naturelles des plantes (1763) and until the end of the 19th century, the word famille was used as a French equivalent of the Latin ordo (or ordo naturalis ). In zoology ,

812-512: Was formed as a partnership between Kew and the Castle Howard Estate. In 2019, the organisation had 2,316,699 public visitors at Kew, and 312,813 at Wakehurst. Its 326-acre (132 ha) site at Kew has 40 historically important buildings; it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003. The collections at Kew and Wakehurst include over 27,000 taxa of living plants, 8.3 million plant and fungal herbarium specimens, and over 40,000 species in

841-525: Was last updated in 2013, and was superseded by World Flora Online . World Flora Online was developed as a successor to The Plant List, in 2012, aiming to include all known plants by 2020. Non-departmental public body The term includes the four types of NDPB (executive, advisory, tribunal, and independent monitoring boards) but excludes public corporations and public broadcasters ( BBC , Channel 4 , and S4C ). The UK Government classifies bodies into four main types. The Scottish Government also has

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