A PROPOSED FLORA OF EUROPE

Summary A new project to write a Flora of Europe is announced by a committee of British and Irish botanists. Emphasis is laid on the great wealth of taxonomic data concerning the flora of Europe already published. These data are to be found in scores of Floras and in innumerable papers published in very diverse journals and periodicals, many of these works being expensive or difficult to obtain. Attention is drawn to the difficulties experienced by taxonomists, phytogeographers, evolutionists and other biologists in gaining access to this vast body of information and in making sense of it once the requisite facts have been ascertained. The discrepancies in taxonomic merit and completeness between the Floras of the different European countries and the inevitable nomenclatural and technical inconsistencies to be found in them are stressed. The ways in which it is planned to overcome these difficulties in the new Flora are outlined. The Flora will cover Europe in the generally accepted sense of the word and will link up with the area covered by Komarov's Flora of the URSS . All the major taxa of Angiosperms and Gymnosperms growing spontaneously in Europe will be keyed and briefly described and the intention is to produce within a period of 15 years a Flora of the greatest possible use to biologists in general, both pure and applied. There is a discussion of the policy which will be adopted concerning the following points: nomenclature, synonymy, taxonomic categories, geographical distribution, hybrids, aliens, apomicts, chromosome numbers. An appeal is made to taxonomists for reprints of their papers. Details of the present organization of the Flora are given.