Brit experts complete A-Z botanical database of 1.25mn plants

LONDON - Botany experts from the UK and US have compiled the most comprehensive plant list to date - the team has completed database of every plant name on the planet - all 1.25 million of them.

Created by researchers at Kew Gardens and the Missouri Botanical Garden, the database identifies 1.25million plant names - 300,000 of which are recognised as standard species while 480,000 are regarded as synonyms or alternative names.

That leaves 260,000 names that are not resolved yet.

The list will help end the century-old confusion caused over plant species, either because scientists in different countries have named the same plant differently or there have been cases of different variants of the same plant, which have been erroneously identified as belonging to different species.

“The plant list is a major step forward for botanical science. It provides for the first time a basic checklist of what plants are on the planet,” the Daily Mail quoted Peter Wyse Jackson, president of the Missouri Botanical Garden, as saying.

So searching the plant list for ‘Hyacinthoides non-scripta’, which is the Latin name for the native bluebell, reaps 26 alternative names currently in use.

The project was first proposed at the International Botanical Congress in 1999 and adopted by the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2002. (ANI)