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World Checklist of Malpighiales

In 1995, the compilation of the World Checklist of Euphorbiaceae (sensu lato) was initiated by Rafaël Govaerts as part of the Global Data project. All relevant literature on the family was consulted and taxonomic and geographical data incorporated into an Access database. After the initial compilation and standardisation of the data, the checklist was reviewed by Alan Radcliffe-Smith at Kew, followed by some external experts. At the end of this process, the database contained 24,000 names of which 8,935 were accepted species.

In 2000, the data were published by RBG Kew in four volumes comprising 1,622 pages as World Checklist and Bibliography of Euphorbiaceae (and Pandaceae) by R. Govaerts, D.G. Frodin & A. Radcliffe-Smith.

Since then, the data have been constantly updated as new literature appears and all new names are added annually. In 2003, the data were transferred into a Sybase data structure and united with all other family checklists compiled for the Global Data project and the Monocot Checklist project. Finally, in 2006, the electronic data was made available on the internet as the World Checklist of Malpighiales (http://www.kew.org/wcsp/malpighiales), also reflecting the new family circumscriptions, with the original Euphorbiaceae now split into six families.

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