The Ericaceae are a family of flowering plants, commonly known as the heath or heather family, found most commonly in acidic and infertile growing conditions. The family is large, with c. 4250 known species spread across 124 genera, making it the 14th most species-rich family of flowering plants. The many well known and economically important members of the Ericaceae include the cranberry, blueberry, huckleberry, rhododendron, and various common heaths and heathers.
Mentha is a genus of plants in the family Lamiaceae. The exact distinction between species is unclear; it is estimated that 13 to 24 species exist. Hybridization occurs naturally where some species' ranges overlap. Many hybrids and cultivars are known.
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. An internationally important botanical research and education institution, it employs 1,100 staff. Its board of trustees is chaired by Dame Amelia Fawcett.
The Caprifoliaceae or honeysuckle family is a clade of dicotyledonous flowering plants consisting of about 860 species, in 33, to 42 genera, with a nearly cosmopolitan distribution. Centres of diversity are found in eastern North America and eastern Asia, while they are absent in tropical and southern Africa.
Bulbophyllum is a genus of mostly epiphytic and lithophytic orchids in the family Orchidaceae. It is the largest genus in the orchid family and one of the largest genera of flowering plants with more than 2,000 species, exceeded in number only by Astragalus. These orchids are found in diverse habitats throughout most of the warmer parts of the world including Africa, southern Asia, Latin America, the West Indies, and various islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Orchids in this genus have thread-like or fibrous roots that creep over the surface of trees or rocks or hang from branches. The stem is divided into a rhizome and a pseudobulb, a feature that distinguished this genus from Dendrobium. There is usually only a single leaf at the top of the pseudobulb and from one to many flowers are arranged along an unbranched flowering stem that arises from the base of the pseudobulb. Several attempts have been made to separate Bulbophyllum into smaller genera, but most have not been accepted by the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families.
Malvaceae, or the mallows, is a family of flowering plants estimated to contain 244 genera with 4225 known species. Well-known members of economic importance include okra, cotton, cacao, roselle and durian. There are also some genera containing familiar ornamentals, such as Alcea (hollyhock), Malva (mallow), and Tilia. The genera with the largest numbers of species include Hibiscus, Pavonia, Sida, Ayenia, Dombeya, and Sterculia.
Cypress is a common name for various coniferous trees or shrubs of northern temperate regions that belong to the family Cupressaceae. The word cypress is derived from Old French cipres, which was imported from Latin cypressus, the latinisation of the Greek κυπάρισσος (kyparissos). Cypress trees are a large classification of conifers, encompassing the trees and shrubs from the cypress family (Cupressaceae) and many others with the word cypress in their common name. Many cypress trees have needle-like, evergreen foliage and acorn-like seed cones.
Linaceae is a family of flowering plants. The family is cosmopolitan, and includes about 250 species in 14 genera, classified into two subfamilies: the Linoideae and Hugonioideae. Leaves of the Linaceae are always simple; arrangement varies from alternate to opposite or whorled. The hermaphroditic, actinomorphic flowers are pentameric or, very rarely, tetrameric.
Putranjivaceae is a rosid family that is composed of 218 species in 2 genera of evergreen tropical trees that are found mainly in the Old World tropics, but with a few species in tropical America.
Acacia, commonly known as wattles or acacias, is a genus of about 1084 species of shrubs and trees in the subfamily Mimosoideae of the pea family Fabaceae. Initially, it comprised a group of plant species native to Africa, South America and Australasia, but is now reserved for species mainly from Australia, with others from New Guinea, Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. The genus name is Neo-Latin, borrowed from the Greek ἀκακία, a term used by Dioscorides for a preparation extracted from the leaves and fruit pods of Vachellia nilotica, the original type of the genus. In his Pinax (1623), Gaspard Bauhin mentioned the Greek ἀκακία from Dioscorides as the origin of the Latin name.
Boonneticae is a family of flowering plants, consisting of 4 genera and 41 species. The family is Neotropical, with the exception of the genus Ploiarium, which is found in Malesia. It is sister to the family Clusiaceae.
Chrysobalanaceae is a family of flowering plants, consisting of trees and shrubs in 27 genera and about 700 species of pantropical distribution with a centre of diversity in the Amazon. Some of the species contain silica in their bodies for rigidity and so the mesophyll often has sclerenchymatous idioblasts. The widespread species Chrysobalanus icaco produces a plum-like fruit and the plant is commonly known as the coco plum.
Erythroxylaceae is a family of flowering trees and shrubs consisting of 4 genera and 271 species. The four genera are AneulophusBenth., ErythroxylumP.Browne, NectaropetalumEngl., and PinacopodiumExell & Mendonça. The best-known species are the coca plants, including the species Erythroxylum coca, the source of the substance coca.
Elmer Drew "E. D." Merrill was an American botanist and taxonomist. He spent more than twenty years in the Philippines where he became a recognized authority on the flora of the Asia-Pacific region. Through the course of his career he authored nearly 500 publications, described approximately 3,000 new plant species, and amassed over one million herbarium specimens. In addition to his scientific work he was an accomplished administrator, college dean, university professor and editor of scientific journals.
Goodenia is a genus of about two hundred species of flowering plants in the family Goodeniaceae. Plants in this genus are herbs or shrubs, mostly endemic to Australia. The leaves are variably-shaped, the flowers arranged in small groups, with three or five sepals, the corolla bilaterally symmetrical and either fan-shaped with two "lips" or tube-shaped. The petals are usually yellow to white, the stamens free from each other and the fruit a capsule.
The family Apodanthaceae comprises about 10 species of endoparasitic herbs. They live in the branches or stems of their hosts, emerging only to flower and fruit. The plants produce no green parts and do not carry out any photosynthesis. There are two genera: Pilostyles and Apodanthes. A third genus, Berlinianche, was never validly published. Mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequences confidently place the Apodanthaceae in the Cucurbitales, where they also fit well in terms of their flower morphology. The native range of Apodanthes is restricted to Central and tropical South America, while Pilostyles has a much wider though disjointed native range, encompassing many countries in tropical and subtropical America, a section of Africa from Gabon to Tanzania and down to Zimbabwe, as well as Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Western Australia.
The Plant List was a list of botanical names of species of plants created by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Missouri Botanical Garden and launched in 2010. It was intended to be a comprehensive record of all known names of plant species over time, and was produced in response to Target 1 of the 2002–2010 Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, to produce "An online flora of all known plants". It has not been updated since 2013, and has been superseded by World Flora Online.
The World Checklist of Selected Plant Families was an "international collaborative programme that provides the latest peer reviewed and published opinions on the accepted scientific names and synonyms of selected plant families." Maintained by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, it was available online, allowing searches for the names of families, genera and species, as well as the ability to create checklists.
Plants of the World Online (POWO) is an online database published by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. It was launched in March 2017 with the ultimate aim being "to enable users to access information on all the world's known seed-bearing plants by 2020". The initial focus was on tropical African Floras, particularly Flora Zambesiaca, Flora of West Tropical Africa and Flora of Tropical East Africa.
World Flora Online is an Internet-based compendium of the world's plant species.
