Press Release

Kew publishes definitive checklist of the world's monocotyledons

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew has just published the world's most definitive checklist of the monocotyledon group of flowering plants. The World Checklist of Monocotyledons consolidates the accepted names of all 75,000 species, along with their associated synonyms (a total of over 200,000 names), into a searchable electronic database for the first time.

The Monocotyledons are an immensely diverse and economically important group, comprising of some 75,000 species in 97 families – over a quarter of all flowering plants. Dominating significant parts of world ecosystems, they include the staple grass food crops (wheat, barley, rice and maize) and other important food plants such as onions, palms, yams, bananas, pineapples and gingers. Many monocotyledons are valued in horticulture, especially daffodils, lilies, irises, hyacinths, snowdrops, orchids, crocus, bromeliads, aroids, palms, grasses and sedges. Others, such Aloe vera, have useful pharmaceutical and chemical properties. The largest family in this group is the orchids, of which there are about 20 thousand species each with unique complex and striking flowers adapted for highly specific insect pollination.

The Checklist will prove an invaluable resource for a whole range of users such as plant scientists, horticulturists, ecologists, conservationists, medical practitioners and lawyers as well as, of course, the wider public who wish to learn more about plants. Previously the only way to find such information was by seemingly endless, time-consuming trawls through obscure literature, much of which is inaccessible to those not living or working near the main botanical libraries. Now a vast amount of information is available with just a few clicks of a mouse.

The checklist also has extra features which considerably enhance its usefulness. For example the Checklist Builder allows you to compile a list of Monocotyledon species occurring within any continent, region or country, and you can also find out what a plant looks like by a direct link from the accepted name to Google Images.

The Checklist is a significant contribution towards meeting international targets, most notably the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation's target of a global checklist for the entire plant kingdom by 2010. A quarter of this global checklist is now complete.

The project has taken five years to complete. Co-ordinated from the Herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew , the work has also depended on the collaboration of many botanists throughout the world, especially in tropical countries, to check and comment on the data – a truly global effort.

The World Checklist of Monocotyledons is available now at www.kew.org/wcsp/monocots/. Currently, data on the grasses data is available separately at www.kew.org/data/grasses-syn.html but the two datasets will be fully integrated by late 2007.

Further Information

For further information please contact Anna Quenby, Lauren Bird or Oliver Basciano in the RBG Kew Press Office on 020 8332 5607 or e-mail pr@kew.org.

Notes to Editors

The project was co-ordinated by Rafaël Govaerts, the checklist and plant names specialist in Kew 's Herbarium. The grasses names were assembled by Derek Clayton, former Assistant Keeper for Monocots and specialist in Grasses, now retired. The early stages of the project were managed by Phil Cribb, orchid specialist, and later stages by Dave Simpson, the current Assistant Keeper for Monocots and specialist in Cyperaceae.

The Monocotyledon Checklist can also be accessed through the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families, a broader enterprise being undertaken along similar lines at Kew that also encompasses a range of important dicotyledon families including Euphobiaceae, Fagaceae, Lamiaceae and Rubiaceae. The World Checklist of Selected Plant Families can be accessed at www.kew.org/wcsp/

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a world famous scientific organisation, internationally respected for its outstanding living collection of plants and world-class herbarium as well as its scientific expertise in plant diversity, conservation and sustainable development in the UK and around the world. Kew Gardens is a major international visitor attraction and its 132 hectares of landscaped gardens attract over one million visitors per year. Kew was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in July 2003 and represents over 250 years of historical landscape. For further information please visit www.kew.org.

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