Plants are essential to sustaining the stability and quality of human life on this planet. At the Missouri Botanical Garden, we have dedicated ourselves to helping conserve biological diversity while there is still something left to protect. Our research provides scientific information essential to decision makers, from conservation and land use to social and environmental policy. We have taken the lead in making information widely accessible via the Internet, maintaining the world's largest botanical database and the premier botanical website, TROPICOS. Garden scientists conduct the most productive and geographically widespread botanical research program in the world.