The (Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

 for Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid) is an 8 hectares (19.8 acre) botanical garden

Botanical garden

A botanical garden The terms botanic and botanical, and garden or gardens are used more-or-less interchangeably, although the word botanic is generally reserved for the earlier, more traditional gardens. is a well-tended area displaying a wide range of plants labelled with their botanical names...

 located at , next to the Prado Museum in Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

 (Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

).

The garden was founded on October 17, 1755, by King Ferdinand VI

Ferdinand VI of Spain

Ferdinand VI , called the Learnt, was King of Spain from 9 July 1746 until his death. He was the fourth son of the previous monarch Philip V and his first wife Maria Luisa of Savoy...

, and installed in the Orchard of Migas Calientes, near what today is called Puerta de Hierro, on the banks of the Manzanares River. It contained more than 2,000 plants collected by José Quer y Martínez

José Quer y Martínez

José Quer y Martínez , was a Spanish doctor and botanist. This botanist is denoted by the author abbreviation Quer when citing a botanical name.- Biography :...

, botanist and surgeon.

In 1774 King Charles III

Charles III of Spain

Charles III was the King of Spain and the Spanish Indies from 1759 to 1788. He was the eldest son of Philip V of Spain and his second wife, the Princess Elisabeth Farnese...

 ordered the garden moved to its current location on the Paseo del Prado

Paseo del Prado

The Paseo del Prado is one of the main boulevards in Madrid, Spain. It runs north-south between the Plaza de Cibeles and the Plaza del Emperador Carlos V , with the Plaza de Cánovas del Castillo lying approximately in the middle...

, with design by architects Francesco Sabatini

Francesco Sabatini

Francesco Sabatini , also known as Francisco Sabatini, was an Italian architect of the 18th century who worked in Spain.-Biography:Born in Palermo, he studied architecture in Rome...

 and Juan de Villanueva

Juan de Villanueva

Juan de Villanueva was a Spanish architect. Alongside Ventura Rodríguez, Villanueva is the best known architect of Spanish Neoclassicism....

 that organized the garden into three tiered terraces, arranging plants according to the method of Linnaeus. This new site opened in 1781. Its mission was not only to exhibit plants, but also to teach botany, promote expeditions for the discovery of new plant species and classify them. The garden was greatly augmented by a collection of 10,000 plants brought to Spain by Alessandro Malaspina

Alessandro Malaspina

Alessandro Malaspina was an Italian nobleman who spent most of his life as a Spanish naval officer and explorer...

 in 1794.

The Spanish War of Independence in 1808 caused the garden to be abandoned, but in 1857 director Mariano de la Paz Graëlls y de la Aguera

Mariano de la Paz Graëlls y de la Aguera

Mariano de la Paz Graëlls y de la Aguera was a Spanish entomologist notable for pioneering work on the insects of corpses.Graëlls was born in Tricio, in the Province of Logroño...

 revived it with a new greenhouse and refurbishment of the upper terrace. Under his leadership a zoo was created in the garden, but subsequently relocated to the . Between 1880 and 1890 the garden suffered heavy losses, first losing 2 hectares (4.9 acre) to the Ministry of Agriculture

Ministry of Agricultura, Pesca y Alimentación

The Ministry of Agriculture Building is a nineteenth-century building located in Madrid, Spain. Although the Ministry of Agriculture has recently merged with the Ministry of the Environment, the building continues to house civil servants responsible for agriculture.The Ministerio de Agricultura,...

 in 1882, then losing 564 trees in 1886 to a cyclone.

Since 1939 the garden has been dependent on the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and in 1942 was declared Artistic Garden. In 1974, after decades of hardship and neglect, the garden was closed to the public for restoration work to its original plan. It reopened in 1981.

Today's garden

Today's garden is divided into three major outdoor sections and two greenhouse

Greenhouse

A greenhouse is a building in which plants are grown. These structures range in size from small sheds to very large buildings...

s. Total collections include about 30,000 plants and flowers, and 1,500 trees. It also contains a substantial herbarium

Herbarium

In botany, a herbarium – sometimes known by the Anglicized term herbar – is a collection of preserved plant specimens. These specimens may be whole plants or plant parts: these will usually be in a dried form, mounted on a sheet, but depending upon the material may also be kept in...

.

• – collections of ornamental plants, medicinal, aromatic, endemic and orchard gathered around a small fountain. All are planted in box-edged plots. At its southern end is a rock garden.

• – a taxonomic collection of plants, ordered phylogenetically
  Phylogenetics
  In biology, phylogenetics is the study of evolutionary relatedness among groups of organisms , which is discovered through molecular sequencing data and morphological data matrices...
  
   and set within plots about 12 small fountains.

• – a diverse collection of trees and shrubs, as designed in the mid-nineteenth century in the romantic English style. It contains the Villanueva Pavilion, built in 1781 as a greenhouse, and a pond with bust of Carl Linnaeus.

The garden's two greenhouses are divided into four rooms. The Graëlls greenhouse dates from the nineteenth century and exhibits tropical plants and bryophyte

Bryophyte

Bryophyte is a traditional name used to refer to all embryophytes that do not have true vascular tissue and are therefore called 'non-vascular plants'. Some bryophytes do have specialized tissues for the transport of water; however since these do not contain lignin, they are not considered to be...

s. The newer structure supports three climates: tropical, temperate, and desert.

The herbarium was established in 1846, and now contains about a million specimens from around the world organized into two collections: phanerogams and cryptogams.

Scientific Publications

• Annals of the Botanical Garden of Madrid

This is called the magazine published by the Botanical Garden, which publishes papers on plant taxonomy and systematics and fungi and related fields such as biogeography, bioinformatics, conservation, ecophysiology, phylogeny, phylogeography, floral, functional morphology, nomenclature or plant relationships -animal, including works of synthesis and review. The magazine sends information about the new species published to be included in the databases W3TROPICOS (vascular plants, bryophytes), International Plant Names Index or Index Fungorum .

• Flora Iberica

Publication of taxonomic research on vascular plants that grow wild in the Iberian Peninsula and Balearic Islands that was published 15 volumes of a total of 21 in 2010.

• Flora Iberica Mycologica is a serial and aperiodic with this generic title published, numbered consecutively, the monographic synthesis as they are being edited, without following a systematic order preset. The work is presented in two columns, with texts in Spanish and English. Bring identification keys, descriptions, distribution, commentary, and bibliographic information. Most species are accompanied by an illustration (ink drawings in black and white).

Ruizía (Monographs of the Royal Botanical Gardens)
Workbooks Flora Micológica Ibérica.

• Flora Huayaquilensis Juan José Tafalla Navascués, a Spaniard who was one of the first who traveled to South America and documenting the different plants with wonderful paintings and written descriptions. All of this work was in the archives and only published by Dr. Estrella
  Eduardo Estrella Aguirre
  Eduardo Estrella Aguirre was an Ecuadorian doctor and researcher who published Flora Huayaquilensis: The Botanical Expedition of Juan Tafalla 1799-1808....
  
   after searching the Real Jardín Botánico in Madrid archives and finding the informaction that formed, Flora Huayaquilensis and finally the life work of Tafalla was published. Dr. Eduardo Estrella Aguirre also founded the Ecuador National Museum of Medicine
  Ecuador National Museum of Medicine
  The Ecuador National Museum of Medicine is located in Calle Sodiro y Valparaiso, Quito, Ecuador.- The mission of the Museum of Medicine :Dr. Eduardo Estrella founded Ecuador's National Museum of Medicine on the 5th of March, 1982. The mission of Dr...
  
  .

External links

• The RJBM official website (in English)
• Añón, C., S. Castroviejo, A. Fernández Alba, Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid, Pabellón de Invernáculos, 1983.
• Colmeiro y Penido, Miguel, Bosquejo histórico y estadístico del Jardín Botánico de Madrid, 1875.
• El Jardín botánico de Madrid. Un paseo guiado / Botanic Garden of Madrid. A guided walk, Madrid, 2004.
• El Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid (1755–2005): Ciencia, Colección y Escuela, Real Jardín Botánico, Madrid, 2005.
• Alessandro Malaspina, Andrew David, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, The Malaspina Expedition, 1789-1794, Hakluyt Society, 2001.
• floraiberica.org In 2010 it published 15 volumes of a total of 21.