Ex situ plant collections play an important role in biodiversity conservation and studies related to plant ecology and evolution. The Botanic Garden of Meise holds 23000 accessions of nearly 18000 different taxa of worldwide origin and distributes around 1000 samples/ year worldwide. As there is an important demand for samples of rare and exceptional taxa and these taxa are often
also important for conservation, Botanic Garden Meise invests in programs to optimize the cultivation of these collections in respect to the niche diversity of the different taxa. Typically gardens with large ex situ collections cultivate these collections uniformly on a taxonomic or geographical level. For example all Aroids, Bromeliads or Begonias are kept in the same greenhouse under the same lighting and temperature and often on only a few potting mixes. Although, ex situ, this works fine for most species, rare and narrow niche taxa tend to get lost first. Currently, in the 10000 taxa rich glasshouse collections, basic tropical ecology data collected from descriptions, databases and herbarium specimens of the different taxa are being encoded in the LIVCOL database. This includes data on biomes and (micro) habitats, habits, temperature, light, edaphic factors and soils. It is now easier to reorganize, cultivate and plant out collections based on an ecological rather than primarily on a taxonomic basis. In addition it is possible to print labels with these data available for the gardening staff. Currently around 2000 taxa have been encoded in the database with priority in
groups with high niche diversity, research interest and importance for conservation.