Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

[2] Kew, jointly with the Forestry Commission, founded Bedgebury National Pinetum in Kent in 1923, specialising in growing conifers.

[9] The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew states that its mission is to apply scientific discovery and research to fully develop the information about and potential uses of plants and fungi.

[16] The scientific staff at Kew maintain a variety of plant and fungal data and digital resources, including those listed below.

It links taxonomic data with images from the collection, to provide a single point of access with information on identification, distribution, traits, conservation, molecular phylogenies and uses.

[19] The Harvard University Herbaria and the Australian National Herbarium co-operate with Kew in the IPNI database, which was launched in its present form in 1999 to produce an authoritative source of information on botanical nomenclature including publication details of seed plants, ferns and lycophytes.

[20] Nitropikey is an international project, based at Kew Gardens, on the flowering plants of the Neotropics (tropical South and Central America).

[27][clarification needed] Kew also cooperated with the Missouri Botanical Garden and other international bodies in The Plant List (TPL).