The Jardin des plantes, also known as the Jardin des plantes de Paris when distinguished from other jardins des plantes in other cities, is the main botanical garden in France. The term Jardin des plantes is the official name in the present day, but it is in fact an elliptical form of Jardin royal des plantes médicinales, which is related to the original purpose of the garden back in the 17th century. Headquarters of the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, the Jardin des plantes is situated in the 5th arrondissement, Paris, on the left bank of the riverSeine, and covers 28 hectares. Since 24 March 1993, the entire garden and its contained buildings, archives, libraries, greenhouses, ménagerie, works of art, and specimens' collection are classified as a national historical landmark in France.
Garden plan
The grounds of the Jardin des plantes include four buildings containing exhibited specimens. These buildings are officially considered as museums following the French law and the French Museum of Natural History calls them galeries :
The grande galerie de l'Évolution was inaugurated in 1889 as the galerie de Zoologie. In 1994 the gallery was renamed with its current name, grande galerie de l'Évolution, and its exhibited specimens were completely reorganised so that the visitor is oriented by the common thread of the evolution as the major subject treated by the gallery.
The galerie de Minéralogie et de Géologie, a mineralogy museum, built as of 1833, inaugurated in 1837.
The galerie de Paléontologie et d'Anatomie comparée, a comparative anatomy museum in the ground floor and a paleontology museum in the first and second floors. The building was inaugurated in 1898.
The galerie de Botanique, inaugurated in 1935 thanks to funds provided by the Rockefeller Foundation, contains botany laboratories and the French Muséum's National Herbarium. The building also contains a small permanent exhibition about botany.
In addition to the gardens and the galleries, there is also a small zoo, the ménagerie du Jardin des plantes, founded in 1795 by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre from animals of the ménagerie royale de Versailles, the menagerie at Versailles, which was dismantled during the French Revolution. The Jardin des plantes maintains a botanical school, which trains botanists, constructs demonstration gardens, and exchanges seeds to maintain biotic diversity. About 4,500 plants are arranged by family on a one hectare plot. Three hectares are devoted to horticultural displays of decorative plants. An Alpine garden has 3,000 species with world-wide representation. Specialized buildings, such as a large Art Decowinter garden, and Mexican and Australian hothouses display regional plants, not native to France. The Rose Garden, created in 1990, has hundreds of species of roses and rose trees.
