The Plant List

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Plant List is a list of botanical names of

species of plants created by the Royal Botanic
Gardens, Kew and the Missouri Botanical
Garden and launched in 2010.[1] It is intended
to be comprehensive, that is, deal with all
known names of species.
There is a complementary project called the
International Plant Names Index, in which
Kew is also involved. The IPNI aims to
provide details of publication and does not aim
to determine which are accepted species
names. Newly published names are
automatically added from IPNI to the World
Checklist of Selected Plant Families, a
database which underlies the Plant List.

Contents

The Plant List

Web address

www.theplantlist.org
(http://www.theplantlist.org/)

Type of site

Encyclopedia

Available in

English

Created by

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Missouri

Botanical Garden

Launched

December 2010

Alexa rank

138,478
(http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/theplantlist.org)
as of 20140119

Current status version 1.1 September 2013

1 Findings
2 Public attention
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

Findings
The Plant List has 1,064,035 scientific plant names of species rank.[2] 350,699 are accepted species names,
belonging to 642 plant families and 17,020 plant genera.[3] The Plant List accepts approximately 350,699
unique species, with 470,624 synonyms for those species, which suggests that many species have been
referred to under more than one name. As of 2014, The Plant List has determined that another 243,000
names are 'unresolved', meaning that botanists have so far been unable to determine whether they are a
separate species or a duplication of the 350,699 unique species.

Public attention

When The Plant List was launched in 2010 (the International Year of Biodiversity), it attracted media
attention for its comprehensive approach.[4] Fox News highlighted the number of synonyms encountered,
suggesting that this reflected a "surprising lack" of biodiversity on earth."[5] The Plant List also attracted
attention for building on the work of English naturalist Charles Darwin, who in the 1880s started a plant list
called the Index Kewensis (IK). Kew has added an average of 6,000 species every year since the IK was first
published with 400,000 names of species.[5] However, the IK (which by 1913 avoided making taxonomic
judgement in its citations) is currently run as part of the IPNI rather than the Plant List.[6]

See also
Australian Plant Census
Australian Plant Name Index
Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, whose Target One states the need for An online flora of all
known plants.
International Plant Names Index
Wikispecies

References
1.
2.
3.
4.

"World's Largest Plants Database Assembled". discovery.com. 2010.

"Summary Statistics". The Plant List. Retrieved June 27, 2014.
"US, British scientists drew up the comprehensive list of world's known land plants". CBC.
Claire Bates (5 January 2011). "Botanical A-Z via Kew: British experts complete database of every plant name on
the planet - all 1.25million of them". London: Daily Mail.
5. "World's Plant Life Far Less Diverse Than Previously Thought". Fox News. 30 December 2010.
6. "About the Index Kewensis". International Plant Names Index. 2004.

External links
Official website (http://www.theplantlist.org/)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Plant_List&oldid=702279868"
Categories: Online botany databases Botanical nomenclature Plant taxonomy
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Missouri Botanical Garden Databases in the United States
Databases in the United Kingdom
This page was last modified on 29 January 2016, at 16:13.
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