A Living Archive at the Tropical Botanical Garden

Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden was established in 1959. Its current institutional profile lists more than 13,000 living plant species, 39 specialist areas and a preserved tropical-rainforest area within a site of roughly 1,125 hectares. These figures describe a working scientific garden as well as a place for visitors: plants are maintained, observed and presented across distinct collections. A living collection changes with time. A plant can be watched as it grows, flowers and fruits, making season and form visible in ways a label alone cannot. The garden’s scale also matters: a visitor’s walk encounters selected parts of a collection, not every species held by the institution.

The herbarium keeps a different record. Its institutional page describes a collection centered on tropical plants from southern Yunnan and extending into subtropical Yunnan and tropical Southeast Asia. As of January 2019, it reported 220,000 specimens, including 757 type specimens, and said the holdings had been digitized. Those are dated figures, not a 2026 inventory. A pressed specimen preserves a particular collected plant together with its label and identification record. Researchers can revisit that material when names or classifications change. The herbarium also describes technical support for research and public institutions, while the living garden makes growth observable. Together, these collections show two kinds of botanical evidence: a plant under cultivation and a traceable specimen from a specific collecting event.