World Flora Online
Encyclopedic list of scientific plant names
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
World Flora Online (WFO) is an Internet-based compendium of the world's plant species.
| |
Website type | Encyclopedia |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Creator | Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Missouri Botanical Garden |
| Website | about |
| Launched | October 2012 |
| Current status | Active |
Description
The World Flora Online (WFO) is an open-access database, launched in October 2012 as a follow-up project to The Plant List, with the aim of publishing an online flora of all known plants by 2020.[1] It is a project of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, with the goal of halting the loss of plant species worldwide by 2020. It is developed by a collaborative group of institutions around the world in response to the 2011–2020 Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC)'s updated Target 1: to produce "an online flora of all known plants".
An accessible flora of all known plant species was considered a fundamental requirement for plant conservation. It provides a baseline for the achievement and monitoring of other targets of the strategy. The previous target of GSPC was achieved in 2010 with The Plant List.[2][3] WFO was conceived in 2012 by an initial group of four institutions; the Missouri Botanical Garden, the New York Botanical Garden, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.[4] In all, 36 institutions are involved in the production.[3]
World Flora Online developed WFO's Plant List (wfoplantlist.org) to replace the traditional Plant List v.1.1 (plantlist.org).[5] In 2024, Pl@ntNet joined the WFO consortium.[6]
