Plants of the World Online
| Available in | English |
|---|---|
| Owner | Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew |
| URL | Plants of the World Online |
| Commercial | No |
| Launched | March 2017 |
Plants of the World Online (POWO) is an online database published by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
History
Following the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew launched Plants of the World Online in March 2017 with the goal of creating an exhaustive online database of all seed-bearing plants worldwide.[1][2] The initial focus was on tropical African flora, particularly flora Zambesiaca, flora of West and East Tropical Africa.[3]
Since March 2024, the website has displayed AI-generated predictions of the extinction risk for each plant.[4]
Description
The database uses the same taxonomical source as the International Plant Names Index,[3] which is the World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP).[5]
The database contains information on the world's flora gathered from 250 years of botanical research. It aims to make available data from projects that no longer have an online presence or were never externally available. POWO includes information on the taxonomy, identification, distribution, traits, threat status, and uses of plants worldwide, and it also contains many images.[6]
As of September 2024, POWO contained 1,433,000 global plant names, 531,800 detailed descriptions, and 400,900 images.
See also
- Australian Plant Name Index
- Convention on Biological Diversity
- eMonocot
- International Plant Names Index
- Tropicos
- World Flora Online
References
- ^ "About the Plants of the World Online portal". Plants of the World Online. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Archived from the original on 2018-01-28. Retrieved 2018-01-26.
- ^ Govaerts, Rafaël H.A. (2018). "101 Nomenclatural Corrections in Preparation for the Plants of the World Online (POWO)" (PDF). Skvortsovia. 4 (3): 74–99. ISSN 2309-6497. Retrieved 2024-09-01. (Govaerts wrongly speaks of "Convention for Botanical Diversity (CBD)).
- ^ a b "About the Plants of the World Online portal", Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, retrieved 2018-01-26
- ^ "Scientists predict the extinction risk for all the world's plants with AI". phys.org. 5 March 2024. Retrieved 2024-12-09.
- ^ Holz, Hanna; Segar, Josiane; Valdez, Jose; Staude, Ingmar R. (2022). "Assessing extinction risk across the geographic ranges of plant species in Europe". Plants, People, Planet. 4 (3): 303–311. doi:10.1002/ppp3.10251. S2CID 246787127.
- ^ "POWO Plants of the World Online". Gothenburg University Library. Archived from the original on 2024-09-04. Retrieved 2024-09-04.
External links