Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether her Department is taking steps to help support Royal Botanic Gardens to protect rare flowers at risk of being endangered.

Defra provides grant in aid funding which supports RBG Kew in delivering its statutory responsibilities under the National Heritage Act. These responsibilities include to ‘care for their collections of plants, preserved plant material, other objects relating to plants, books and records’ and to ‘carry out investigation and research into the science of plants and related subjects, and disseminate the results of the investigation and research’

Kew’s living collection houses many rare species, some of which are extinct in the wild. Approximately 90 plants and 24 fungi were newly named in 2022 by Kew and partners alone, of which many are extremely rare species threatened with extinction.

Defra and the Animal and Plant Health Agency provide funding to Kew to support their work, as the UK CITES Scientific Authority for plants, in assessing and advising on the sustainability of international trade in over 30,000 plant species listed by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

Kew are working to identify and map Tropical Important Plant Areas in critical sites for plant conservation across the tropics. This project’s work in the UK’s overseas territories is part funded by the Darwin Plus scheme.