• Home
• Science Strategy
• Science Teams
• Projects
  • Flora Zambesiaca
• People
• Publications
• Acronyms

Flora Zambesiaca

This Flora deals with the higher plants of Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Botswana. Some 10,000 plants will be treated.

This project involves the writing and publishing of a regional Flora (Flora Zambesiaca with around 53 parts) for south-central Africa, covering Botswana, Caprivi Strip, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe. It started in 1960 and was designed to provide a catalogue of the plant species of the area, a means to identify them using keys, and an indication of distribution. Total Flora is around 10,200 species and around 77% has been published to date. It is intended that the flora will be 85% complete by the end of 2007.

A number of partner institutions have been involved over the years, including national herbaria in the region and institutions in Portugal. In addition, many family treatments have been prepared by past and present Kew staff members.

Since 2000, there have been efforts to increase the accessibility of the information contained in the printed volumes of the African Floras by novel application of xml mark-up techniques to scanned-in texts. Most of the published treatments/volumes of Flora Zambesiaca are available as a fully searchable database on the internet. The database retrieves information for any name (accepted or synonym), or allows the compilation of checklists of taxa for geographical divisions of the flora. Advanced features include filtering on habit, habitat, altitudinal range and endemic status. Dichotomous identification keys are included and it is also possible to browse the complete taxonomic hierarchy. It is planned to get all edited families on-line by early 2007.

Kew Home | Science Directory | Copyright & Privacy