The Flora Europaea is a 5-volume encyclopedia of plants, published between 1964 and 1993 by Cambridge University Press. The aim was to describe all the national Floras of Europe in a single, authoritative publication to help readers identify any wild or widely cultivated plant in Europe to the subspecies level. It also provides information on geographical distribution, habitat preference, and chromosome number, where known.
The Flora was released in CD form in 2001, and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh have made an index to the plant names available online.
History
The idea of a pan-European Flora was first mooted at the 8th International Congress of Botany in Paris in 1954.[1] In 1957, Britain's Science and Engineering Research Council provided grants to fund a secretariat of three people,[2] and Volume 1 was published in 1964. More volumes were issued in the following years, culminating in 1980 with the monocots of Volume 5. The royalties were put into a trust fund administered by the Linnean Society, which allowed funding for Dr John Akeroyd to continue work on the project.[3] A revised Volume 1 was launched at the Linnean Society on 11 March 1993.
A panel of regional advisers was formed, in order to ensure full coverage of the whole of Europe. Several of the advisers were also authors in their respective taxonomic specialities. For each country the representatives were:
