Tela Botanica is a collaborative network of French-speaking botanists, 80% of whom reside in France (approximately 28,000 registered at the end of 2016). The Tela Botanica network was created and is managed by an association under the 1901 law: the Tela Botanica Association. This association filed its statutes on December 14, 1999 in the Hérault department.
The Tela Botanica network was created with the aim of supporting the renewal of botany in the French-speaking world. In view of the growing importance of the challenges related to the protection of the planet’s resources and the need for their sustainable use, it is important that botany regains a prominent place at the crossroads of the many disciplines that concern knowledge of plants and the plant world: floristics, systematics, taxonomy, phytosociology, phytogeography, chorology, plant ecology, ethnobotany, etc.
Tela Botanica is part of the consortium of 8 institutions (Agropolis Fondation (coordinator), Tela Botanica, INRIA, CIRAD, INRA, IRD, CNRS, University of Montpellier) that supports the Floris’ Tic project.
The objective of this project is "to develop the capacity of stakeholders, particularly territorial stakeholders, to design and implement projects that mobilize and enrich botanical knowledge, and ultimately, through these stakeholders, to develop scientific plant culture for the greatest number of people". It is structured around 3 axes:
- the structuring and emergence of relay communities
- the development of a common platform dedicated to the creation, access and exchange of knowledge on plants
- the implementation of innovative tools for training and awareness-raising in plant sciences and professions
