Flora of the Caucasus Region The New York Botanical Garden in collaboration with the Institute of Botany of the Georgian Academy of Sciences is working on a project to document the flora of the Republic of Georgia and strengthen the capacity for botanical science in this floristically important part of the world.
The Caucasus Region, encompassing the entire country of Georgia and parts of neighboring Turkey, Russia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan was named one of the world's 25 biodiversity hotspots by Conservation International. Nearly one third of the flora of Georgia, comprising some 4400 species, is of special conservation concern. Many of these endemic, rare, threatened, or vulnerable plants are at risk of extinction if adequate measures are not undertaken to protect them and the ecosystems they inhabit.
A checklist of these important plants was compiled by scientists from the Institute of Botany in Tblisi and staff from Missouri Botanical Garden.
In August 2001, under the direction of Dr. Dennis Stevenson of The New York Botanical Garden, collections of Georgian plant material for floristic, systematic and phytochemical study began. These and other specimens from Georgia, housed in the Garden's William and Linda Steere Herbarium, are being databased and imaged to create this catalog. In addition, we are providing infrastructure support and training, as well as hardware and software that will enable our Georgian colleagues to begin databasing and imaging specimens from Herbaria within Georgia. The specimen data from these areas, combined in this catalog, will be accessible to Georgian researchers and to the worldwide scientific community.
To search the Flora of the Caucasus Catalog by the name of the plant (family, genus, species, or subspecific epithet), author, collector, collector number, barcode number, or type status, use the Basic Search box below. To search one or more specific fields in the database, choose the Detailed Search. further >>>
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