Flora of North America Project

Flora of North America Project
Title	Flora of North America
Editors	Almut G. Jones; Alex B. Doweld; D. E. Boufford
Country	United States; Canada
Language	English
Discipline	Botany
Publisher	Oxford University Press; Flora of North America Association
Started	1993
Website	Flora of North America

Flora of North America Project The Flora of North America Project is a multinational collaborative undertaking to describe the vascular plants, bryophytes, and select algae and fungi of North America. Initiated as a synthesis of regional floristic traditions, the Project brings together contributors from institutions such as the Smithsonian Institution, New York Botanical Garden, Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, Missouri Botanical Garden and universities including Harvard University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Toronto, and University of British Columbia. The work interfaces with global initiatives like the International Association for Plant Taxonomy and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

History

The Project traces origins to botanical surveys and floras such as Asa Gray's 19th-century treatments, the Gray Herbarium collections, and 20th-century series including the Flora of North America North of Mexico proposals discussed at meetings of the American Society of Plant Taxonomists and the Canadian Botanical Association. Formal organization emerged in the early 1990s with leadership drawn from the New York Botanical Garden and the Missouri Botanical Garden, and advisory input from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Smithsonian Institution. Major milestones include publication agreements with Oxford University Press and collaborations with the United States Department of Agriculture plant databases, reflecting precedents set by regional floras like the Flora of China and the Flora Europaea.

Scope and Coverage

The Project covers the continental floristic region encompassing the United States, Canada, Greenland, and adjacent archipelagos. Taxonomic scope includes vascular plant families treated in accord with standards from the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature and later the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants. The Project aims to provide keys, descriptions, distributions, synonymies, and specimen citations for genera and species comparable to treatments in the Flora Neotropica and the Flora Mesoamericana. Geographic and ecological treatments reference bioregions studied by institutions such as the Nature Conservancy and the Canadian Wildlife Service.

Organization and Funding

Governance rests with the Flora of North America Association and editorial boards staffed by curators from the New York Botanical Garden, Missouri Botanical Garden, Harvard University Herbaria, and the Canadian Museum of Nature. Funding has come from grants and contracts with agencies including the National Science Foundation, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and philanthropic foundations such as the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Partner organizations include the United States Geological Survey, the Canadian Forest Service, and academic consortia across institutions like Cornell University and the University of Michigan.

Editorial and Taxonomic Methodology

Editorial procedures follow peer-review norms practiced by journals like Taxon and Systematic Botany. Contributors include specialists affiliated with herbaria such as the Gray Herbarium, New York Botanical Garden Herbarium, and the United States National Herbarium. Nomenclatural decisions reference rulings of the International Botanical Congress and databases maintained by the International Plant Names Index and the Index Herbariorum. Taxonomic concepts incorporate molecular phylogenetic results published in journals such as American Journal of Botany and Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, integrating work by researchers at centers like Kew Gardens and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

Publications and Outputs

Major outputs include multi-volume printed flora treatments published by Oxford University Press and distributed to libraries such as the Library of Congress and university collections at Harvard University and the University of Toronto. Secondary products include checklists, identification keys, and regional supplements used by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, state departments of natural resources like California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and conservation NGOs including The Nature Conservancy. Collaborative monographs and special issues have appeared in periodicals like Rhodora and Brittonia.

Digital Resources and Database

The Project maintains an online portal and database that cross-links specimen records from herbaria in the Consortium of Northeastern Herbaria, the SEINet network, and the Canadian Biodiversity Information Facility. Digital outputs interface with aggregators including the Global Biodiversity Information Facility and the Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio). Tools support map visualizations compatible with standards from the Darwin Core schema and metadata practices championed by the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Impact and Reception

The Project has influenced floristic research, conservation planning, and environmental policy implementation cited by agencies like the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the Canadian Wildlife Service. It informed regional red-list assessments coordinated by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and state biodiversity strategies from entities such as the California Natural Diversity Database. Scholarly reception appears in citations across journals including Systematic Biology, Conservation Biology, and the Journal of Biogeography, and its methods have been compared with those used in the Flora of China and the Flora Iberica projects.

Category:Botanical literature Category:Floras of North America