How many known vascular plant species are there in the world? An integration of multiple global plant databases
Hong Qian, Jian Zhang, Jingchao Zhao
Abstract
Aims: Despite that vascular plants constitute an important component of overall global biodiversity and have been studied well over two centuries, the questions of "How many species of vascular plants are there in the world and how many of them have been discovered and described?" remain open. Here, we address the second of the two questions. Method: We synthesized four global plant databases.
Topics & Concepts
Vascular plantPlant speciesDatabaseBiologyComputer scienceBotanyEcologySpecies richnessBotanical Studies and ApplicationsBotany and Plant Ecology StudiesPlant Taxonomy and Phylogenetics