The Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid (Spanish for Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid) is an 8-hectare (20-acre) botanical garden located at Plaza de Murillo, next to the Prado Museum in Madrid (Spain).
The garden was founded on October 17, 1755, by King Ferdinand VI, and installed in the Orchard of Migas Calientes, near what today is called Puerta de Hierro, on the banks of the Manzanares River. It contained more than 2,000 plants collected by José Quer y Martínez, botanist and surgeon.
In 1774 King Charles III ordered the garden moved to its current location on the Paseo del Prado, with design by architects Francesco Sabatini and Juan de Villanueva that organized the garden into three tiered terraces, arranging plants according to the method of Linnaeus. This new site opened in 1781. Its mission was not only to exhibit plants, but also to teach botany, promote expeditions for the discovery of new plant species and classify them. The garden was greatly augmented by a collection of 10,000 plants brought to Spain by Alessandro Malaspina in 1794.
The Spanish War of Independence in 1808 caused the garden to be abandoned, but in 1857 director Mariano de la Paz Graëlls y de la Aguera revived it with a new greenhouse and refurbishment of the upper terrace. Under his leadership a zoo was created in the garden, but subsequently relocated to the Parque del Buen Retiro. Between 1880 and 1890 the garden suffered heavy losses, first losing 2 hectares (4.9 acres) to the Ministry of Agriculture in 1882, then losing 564 trees in 1886 to a cyclone.
Since 1939 the garden has been dependent on the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and in 1942 was declared Artistic Garden. In 1974, after decades of hardship and neglect, the garden was closed to the public for restoration work to its original plan. It reopened in 1981.
Today's garden is divided into three major outdoor sections and two greenhouses. Total collections include about 30,000 plants and flowers, and 1,500 trees. It also contains a substantial herbarium.
The garden's two greenhouses are divided into four rooms. The Graëlls greenhouse dates from the nineteenth century and exhibits tropical plants and bryophytes. The newer structure supports three climates: tropical, temperate, and desert.
The herbarium was established in 1846, and now contains about a million specimens from around the world organized into two collections: phanerogams and cryptogams.
This is called the magazine published by the Botanical Garden, which publishes papers on plant taxonomy and systematics and fungi and related fields such as biogeography, bioinformatics, conservation, ecophysiology, phylogeny, phylogeography, floral, functional morphology, nomenclature or plant relationships -animal, including works of synthesis and review. The magazine sends information about the new species published to be included in the databases W3TROPICOS (vascular plants, bryophytes), International Plant Names Index or Index Fungorum .
Publication of taxonomic research on vascular plants that grow wild in the Iberian Peninsula and Balearic Islands that was published 15 volumes of a total of 21 in 2010.
Ruizía (Monographs of the Royal Botanical Gardens) Workbooks Flora Micológica Ibérica.