LAHORE, Sept 14: The Government College University has a distinction of having the first botanical garden among campuses in the country. In a press release, GCU spokesman Prof Muhammad Iqbal Anjum, contradicting a news item that appeared in Dawn on Friday, said: “It is the GCU, Lahore, and not the University of Karachi that developed the first botanical garden in 1912, extending facilities of study and research on the flora.”

The news report had said: “The University of Karachi is the first educational institution in the country to have a botanical garden with facilities of study and research on the flora.”

The GCU spokesman said the their botanical garden possessed such unique research facilities that in 2006 the federal ministry of environment declared it a “Secretariat of Pakistan Botanic Garden Network”.