Central Botanical Garden of the Academy of Sciences of the Union of

Central Botanical Garden of the Academy of Sciences of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics 

a research and educational botanical institution. Founded in 1945 in Moscow to mark the 220th anniversary of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

The Central Botanical Garden studies the theory and practice of the acclimatization and introduction of plants; distant hybridization; and urban planting. It also disseminates botanical knowledge. The garden area is 360 hectares (ha), of which 50 ha are occupied by an oak forest reservation. Scientific departments include flora of the USSR, dendrology, tropical and subtropical flora, cultivated plants, floriculture, distant plant hybridization, plant protection, and mobilization of plant resources. There are laboratories on physiology of plant development: biochemistry, embryology, histochemistry, and morphology. Groups include plant immunity, agricultural soil science, plant poisons and viruses, and lawn and landscape architecture; there are also herbariums. An experimental center, Snegiri, is located 43 km from Moscow; it has an area of 1,200 ha (including approximately 880 ha under pasture), with support stations on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus (in Gagra) and in the Kulunda steppe of the Altai Krai (the Altai Sovkhoz).

The most important collections of living plants gathered in the Central Botanical Garden are on exhibit: flora of the Soviet Union (the Caucasus, Middle Asia, European USSR, Siberia, the Far East), a dendrarium (a collection of woody plants), cultivated plants, ornamental horticulture, and tropical and subtropical flora (in hothouses). Among the plants represented in the hothouses are orchids, Bromeliaceae, ferns, succulents, fern palms, and palms. Widely represented in collections on open ground are woody plants of the northern hemisphere and varieties of such plants as roses (up to 2,500), lilacs, bulbous plants, irises, peonies, gladioli, and dahlias.

Scientific research conducted at the Central Botanical Garden is devoted to problems associated with reconstructing USSR flora, acclimatizing and introducing plants, bringing valuable wild-growing plants under cultivation, selecting varieties, planting trees, and moving tropical and sub-tropical crops to the north. Scientific expeditions are organized for the study and collection of plants of the natural flora. The Central Botanical Garden publishes the Biulleten’ Glavnogo botanichicheskogo sada (Bulletin of the Central Botanical Garden; since 1948), monographs, collections, and seed-exchange catalogs. It maintains scientific ties with botanical gardens all over the world and conducts a systematic exchange of seeds, plants, and scientific works. The Council of Botanical Gardens of the USSR, which is attached to the Central Botanical Garden, coordinates the activities of all scientific institutions working on the problem of acclimatization and introduction of plants.

N. V. TSITSIN