Botanical garden

Botanical garden [ Horticulture ]	Dictionary of botanic terminology - index of names
Synonyms: Botanic garden, Arboretum

A garden often with greenhouses for the culture, study, conservation and exhibition of special plants.

Botanical gardens (in Latin hortus botanicus) grow a wide variety of plants both for scientific purposes and for the enjoyment and education of visitors, originally, they were collections of living plants designed to illustrate relationships within plant groups.
The idea of making an institution dedicated to the collection of plants is found both in ancient Chinese, Egyptian and Mesopotamian gardens. In classical Greece and Rome, such plants were used for medicinal purposes. This practice was continued in the monasteries of medieval Europe and flourished a new with the scientific concerns of the renaissance. The world now has a large number of botanic gardens that exhibit ornamental plants in a scheme that emphasizes natural relationships. Botanical gardens are also reservoirs of valuable heritable characteristics, potentially important in the breeding of new cultivars of plants. Botanists maintain the garden's library and herbarium of dried and documented plant material. Botanical gardens may also serve to entertain and educate the public and another function is the training of gardeners. However, not all botanical gardens are open to the public
A display garden of mostly woody plants (shrubs and trees) is often called an arboretum

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Holdfast roots [ Botany ]
Dictionary of botanic terminology - index of names

Some species of climbing plants develop holdfast roots which help to support the vines on trees, walls, and rocks. By forcing their way into minute pores and crevices, they hold the plant firmly in place.

Climbing plants, like the poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans), Boston ivy (Parthenocissus tricuspidata), and trumpet creeper (Campsis radicans), develop holdfast roots which help to support the vines on trees, walls, and rocks. By forcing their way into minute pores and crevices, they hold the plant firmly in place. Usually the Holdfast roots die at the end of the first season, but in some species they are perennial. In the tropics some of the large climbing plants have hold-fast roots by which they attach themselves, and long, cord-like roots that extend downward through the air and may lengthen and branch for several years until they strike the soil and become absorbent roots.

Major references and further lectures:
1) E. N. Transeau “General Botany” Discovery Publishing House, 1994