
Completing the Plant Tree of Life
Discovering and disseminating the evolutionary history of all plant genera.
Plant Tree of LifeThe tree of life is the fundamental biological roadmap for navigating the evolution and properties of life on Earth, and yet many of its branches remain largely unresolved.
Most of the fungal tree is unmapped and even the flowering plant tree is fraught with data gaps, despite the critical role these groups play in sustaining ecosystems.
This Initiative builds on the successes of the Plant and Fungal Trees of Life (PAFTOL) project to deliver a further step change in our knowledge.
It will equip us with the tools to accelerate efforts to document, identify and classify life on Earth, to explore its useful properties, to understand its origins and evolution, and to predict how species will respond to future environmental change.
The Tree of Life Initiative aims to:
Discovering and disseminating the evolutionary history of all plant genera.
Plant Tree of LifeDiscovering and disseminating the evolutionary history of all fungal genera.
Fungal Tree of LifeThe Tree of Life initiative is actively working with other projects and programmes that share our goals:
Accelerated Taxonomy
Trait Diversity and Function
Our Tree of Life publications are listed in our Research Repository.
Explore the tree of life and access the genomic data that underpin them in Kew Tree of Life Explorer.
Data are currently available for flowering plants only. Research on fungi is underway and will be released in due course.