Botanical inventory of the Arboretum of the Domaine départemental de la Vallée-aux-woups

Botanical inventory of trees and shrubs of the arboretum of the Domaine départemental de la Vallée-aux-woups * * * A highlight of the history of French horticulture, the arboretum of the Domaine départemental de la Vallée-aux-Loups houses an important heritage of extraordinary trees, often centenary, and in particular the world’s first weeping blue cedar. The name “arboretum” highlights the history of the plant collections developed by Gustave Croux, a nurseryist established in these places at the end of the 19th century. Although today, the management of the site does not pursue any particular scientific project, the majestic character of the wooded heritage, the botanical diversity of planted species inherited from the 19th century and the concept of new collection gardens maintain this spirit of arboretum and deserve to be developed. As part of the five-year management plan for the Vallée-aux-wolves departmental domain, one of the main axes chosen is to develop the heritage recognition of the site and to carry out the exhaustive inventory and labelling of plants of botanical interest. It is also to meet a recurring demand from the public and botanical enthusiasts, amateurs and professionals, that the Department is committed to this approach. This project, which began in 2014, was carried out in several stages: * a field census; * taxonomic verification*: important scientific research, drawing on numerous international sources with the aim of complying with the phylogenetic classification* * capture and geolocation of each tree and shrub, within a computerised database; * field labeling. **Lexic** Phylogenetic classification Classification based on the study of the evolutionary origins of a group of living beings established by various methods based on anatomy, paleontology, serological affinities and more recent, the comparison of the molecular structure of DNA that makes it possible to establish, in absolute terms, the degree of genetic kinship of two living lines. All verifications are based on the APG III Classification (2009), the third version of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group’s Botanical Classification of Angiosperms. The 2021 update has been corrected according to the APG IV classification (2016), the fourth version of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group Botanical Classification of Angiosperms. Taxon A set of living beings sharing certain characteristics, from which their classification is established. The categories of biological classification, such as species, genus, family, order, class or branch line, are therefore taxa. Taxonomy Science of the nomenclature of living things. The taxonomy indicates the procedure of their comparative description, provides the means to identify them and offers classification criteria. **Special observations** To keep a historical record of plant species that have been planted on the estate, we opted to keep within the inventory the plants that had to be slaughtered. **Related data** [gbif.org/fr](https://www.gbif.org/fr/) The GBIF-Global Biodiversity Information Facility — is an international network and data infrastructure funded by global governments aimed at providing free access to data on all forms of life on Earth for all everywhere. [catalogueoflife.org](http://www.catalogueoflife.org) Catalogue of Life (COL), is a taxonomy database aimed at covering all known living species, accessible on the Internet. The interest of this site is to collect information on about 100 specialised databases (e.g. FishBase and ITIS). This allows Catalogue of Life to present nearly 1,900,000 taxa in September 2020. [inpn.mnhn.fr](https://inpn.mnhn.fr/accueil/index/) National inventory of French natural heritage (including overseas). The INPN was initiated in 2003 and officially launched in 2005 on the basis of data managed since 1979 by the Secretariat of Wildlife and Flora (SFF) of the National Museum of Natural History (MNHN). [plantsoftheworldonline.org](http://www.plantsoftheworldonline.org/) Launched in March 2017 by the Royal Botanical Gardens of Kew, “Plants of the World Online” (PoWo) is an online database providing authoritative information on global flora, gathered from 250 years of botanical knowledge.