Horticultural botany

Horticultural botany is the study of the botany of cultivated plants, with emphasis on the plants of ornamental horticulture.

Professional horticultural botanists are employed by botanical gardens, large nurseries, universities, and government: their activities will vary according to the priorities of the institutions where they work but traditionally their duties have included: searching for new plants suitable for cultivation (plant hunting); communicating with and advising the general public on matters concerning the classification and nomenclature of cultivated plants and carrying out original research on these topics; describing the cultivated plants of particular regions (horticultural floras) and their history; recording new introductions; maintaining databases of cultivated plants; curating horticultural herbaria (including collections of dried specimens, images etc. ); contributing to the "International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants".

Perhaps the single major concern of horticultural botanists has been the taxonomy of cultivated plants and so, at the present time, many horticultural botanists will be members if the "International Association of Cultivated Plant Taxonomy" which was established in 2007.