Remaining Bugs (working on it...)
- The search for hybrids needs a Roman "x" (not the hybrid sign!) between genus and epithet, otherwise it does not show results. We are working on a fix, so the program would enable the search without the "x".

17.4.2025 Version 25.04
- New or changed IPNI data as of April 15th, 2025 are included
- Standardization of literature citations (2nd refinement run) is completed about 80 %.
- Some major phylogenetic papers are included.

1.4.2025 Version 25.04
Finally, the last desperately needed major piece of data curation, standardization of literature citations (at least the first run) is done after 9 months of almost full-time work! All 1,4+ million literature citations have been somewhat checked and are standardized as much as possible. [I have never believed I would be able to achieve this, but retirement helps...]
I have tried to follow IPNI quite closely, but not all literature citations are already standardized in IPNI, and some standards used there are not quite logical and straightforward and should be improved somewhat. For example, [authors] in the book citations should be always in square brackets, (places of publication) in regular brackets.
It will be almost impossible to completely list the hundreds of thousands of infraspecific names for varieties, forms or subspecies coined in the 19th and early 20th century in Europe by over-prolific authors like Jordan, Engler, Hegi, Ascherson & Graebner, Sudre or Gandoger. Those names have usually no real taxonomic significance today, but in rare cases they need to be checked and resurrected, if a cryptic species turns up in molecular analyses.
There will be a 2nd (refinement) run of standardization, already under way (done for letters A and B), which hopefully will be completed in the next two months. This refinement will focus on errors in numbers (volumation and year), which often were caused by scanning errors in the old Index Kewensis digitalization of the 1990s.
Also, some Central European names contained in the (exceptionally complete!) “Florenliste von Deutschland” (Hand et al.) are not yet completely transferred over - in WorldPlants their literature citation is missing. I am working on this and hopefully will have it completed soon.

Several further major pieces of housekeeping:
- Checked, emended and corrected almost 2.000 (mostly infraspecific) synonyms created by the prolific Hugo Zapałowicz in the Galicia region in the 1900s and 1910s. He published the same names several times in obscure journals and books in parallel, which led to a big confusion, which was clarified only recently by Paszko et al. (2020). Only one (hopefully the valid) literature citation was added to each entry, in order to avoid further confusion.
- Added literature citations to many Hawaiian names which were not yet included in IPNI, but are available in the Smithsonian database for Hawaii.
- In Ferns, the paper of Schuettpelz et al. (Taxon, 2025) with a phylogenetically based reorganization of Cheilanthoideae was very important, including merging Oeosporangium into Aleuritopteris. Finally, the taxonomy of this confusing group is resting on more solid ground.
- New or changed IPNI citations are imported as of March 21st, 2025.

6.3.2025 Version 25.03
- Changed IPNI data as of March 4th, 2025 imported
- Standardization of literature citations (first round) slowly progressing, now down to 13.000 names, but those are very difficult and need to be researched in almost all cases
- A few new taxonomic and phylogenetic papers included

25.2.2025 Version 25.02
- For technical reasons, the whole website (including Flora Germanica) had to be moved to another server. This caused several bugs and intermittent outages during the last two weeks. Apologies for it. Currently everything is fixed again, and during this issue, we found and fixed several bugs being present for the last years. So we hope the system is now running more stable than ever. We are always grateful for feedback.
- User numbers are steadily climbing, and many botanical institutions worldwide are using WorldPlants as a reference.
- The WorldFerns dataset has been incorporated into WorldFloraOnline (WFO) and is used there as taxonomical backbone. I am honored that WFO (like Catalogue of Life) is using WorldFerns as taxonomic reference.
- The standardization of literature citations (first round) is progressing steadily, completed about 97% (but the last few % are the hardest, because those are the non-obvious cases...) About 20.000 names (of 1,4 Million) remain to be checked and updated (Ferns are already 100% standardized). Many errors in citations are rectified.
- New or changed IPNI data as of February 19th, 2025 imported, as well as some recent taxonomic papers
- The inclusion of detailed distribution data for the British Isles (Plant Atlas 2020) has been completed.
- Notable phylogenic papers: new phylogeny of Magnoliidae (Helmstetter et al., 2025)
- New Phylogeny of Malvales (Colli-Silva et al. 2025)
- The two families Asaraceae and Lactoridaceae are recognized as separate from Aristolochiaceae, following the results of Jost et al. (2021)

20.1.2025 Version 25.01
- New or changed IPNI data as of January 18th, 2025 imported, as well as some recent taxonomic papers
- As always, fixed some errors
- The inclusion of detailed distribution data for the British Isles (Plant Atlas 2020) is about 60% done.
- Distribution data for the Gulf States (Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Qatar) were completely revised, because they were sketchy. Many new records especially for the U.A.E. are included.

11.12.2024 Version 24.12
- The standardization of literature citations (first round) is progressing steadily, completed about 60%.
- New or changed IPNI data as of December 5th, 2024 imported, as well as some recent taxonomic papers.

5.11.2024 Version 24.11
- The standardization of literature citations (first round) is completed about 20%.
- New or changed IPNI data as of November 4th, 2024 imported
- Inclusion of many recent papers and lots of small error fixes. Thanks to everybody who has notified me about issues.

9.10.2024 Version 24.10
- The long planned standardization of literature citations was started, with the completion of the Ferns part. Since this dataset originated from the old Index Filicum, beginning in the 1990s, the literature citations were very incoherent. Now they are streamlined, and numerous errors eliminated. The standardization of the other parts will follow, but this needs major time. Also, the literature citations for the other parts are in somewhat better shape than the Fern part was.
- The inclusion of Strid's Atlas of the Hellenic Flora (2024) is now complete.
- Changed IPNI data as of October 5th, 2024 imported

19.9.2024 Version 24.9
- Changed IPNI data as of September 16th, 2024 imported
- In a major effort of housekeeping, the numerous literature citations of Engler's monographs (Natürliche Pflanzenfamilien and Pflanzenreich) were standardized. They had so far been fairly chaotic, being imported from many sources.
- Detailed distribution data for Greece (Strid 2024) about 80% complete.
- Inclusion of missing names from Zahn's Hieracium and Pilosella works (Engler-Pflanzenreich) also about 80% complete, adding hundreds of more synonyms and eliminating many doubtful species from Scandinavia.

27.8.2024 Version 24.8
- Changed IPNI data as of August 24th, 2024 imported
- Many small error fixes
- Many corrections and updates for Ferns by Chris Hoess
- The number of accepted species was reduced by about 200 in the last update, because many doubtful Hieracium-names from Scandinavia were now transferred as synonyms into the genus Pilosella. This was known already by Zahn (in Engler 1923) but Zahn's revision never got completely translated in todays taxonomic databases. I have started this tedious work but am still only about 50 % done. Probably there are a few 100 more synonyms still hidden in the plethora of old Scandinavian Hieracium names.
- Numerous species described by B. S. Kharitontsev ("Charit.") for one district in Siberia are generally omitted in WorldPlants lists (if not already synonymized), because it is almost certain that they are all synonyms (Sennikov 2024). Interested readers can consult IPNI for those names. Should any of them later be validated by a secondary source, they will be re-listed.

18.7.2024 Version 24.7
- Changed IPNI data as of July 17th, 2024 imported
- Many small error fixes
- Recent literature imported (notable: Lecythidaceae phylogeny and new genera by Vargas et al. 2024)
- Import of the new Atlas of the Hellenic Flora (Strid 2024) about 60 % complete.

30.6.2024 Version 24.6 and number change
- For more clarity, the version numbers will in the future reflect the year and month of release. The current version is therefore 24.6 for June 2024.
- Changed IPNI data as of June 28th, 2024 imported
- Many small changes and taxonomic updates
- Many recent taxonomic papers added

16.5.2024 Version 19.3
- The new general plant phylogeny published by Zuntini et al. (2024) in Nature was adopted, leading to many changes in the phylogeny and linear sequence. Notably, several orders were newly recognized (like Metteniusales, Oncothecales, Apodanthales and Huales). Also, 7 (mostly smaller and obscure) families are not recognized any more, therefore the number of families decreases from 526 to 519. WorldPlants will continue to recognize more families than POWO/Kew, especially in the orders Dioscoreales, Boraginales and Santalales.
- Changed family circumscriptions are as follows: Vivianaceae and Melanthiaceae sunk in Francoaceae; Tetradiclidaceae in Nitrariaceae; Diegodendraceae in Bixaceae; Corbichoniaceae in Lophiocarpaceae; Agdestidaceae in Phytolaccaceae and Rehmanniaceae in Orobanchaceae.
- Changed IPNI data as of May 12th, 2024 imported.

17.4.2024 Version 19.2
- Changed IPNI data as of April 15th, 2024 imported.
- New online papers added.
- Flora of North America vol. 11/1-2 (Fabaceae) included (many changes especially in North American Lupinus)
- Started to gradually include the new Atlas of the Hellenic Flora (Strid 2024), refining distribution data for Greece, Crete and East Aegaean Islands. This is about 30 % complete and will need more time.
- Fixed small bugs and omissions across the system

9.3.2024 Version 19.1
- The family circumscriptions (as well as the sequence in the Tree of Life) have been adapted to recent molecular results. Mostly small families are affected (for example in Dioscoreales).
     Nine families are not recognized any more: Cochlospermaceae now in Bixaceae, Hypseocharitaceae now in Geraniaceae, Malesherbiaceae and Turneraceae now in Passifloraceae, Medusagynaceae and Quiinaceae now in Ochnaceae, Parnassiaceae now in Celastraceae, Pteridophyllaceae now in Papaveraceae and Rhoipteleaceae now in Juglandaceae.
     The equal number of nine families are newly recognized: Pteridryaceae and Arthropteridaceae (both formerly subfamilies of Tectariaceae), Trichopodaceae, Afrothismiaceae, Taccaceae and Thismiaceae (all formerly in Dioscoreaceae s. l.), Petiveriaceae (formerly part of Phytolaccaeae), Donatiaceae (formerly part of Stylidiaceae) and Eremosynaceae (formerly part of Escalloniaceae). So the total number of families (526) stays the same.
- Changed IPNI-Data as of March 6th, 2024 imported.
- Added about 400 species described in 2021-23 which were overlooked for unknown reasons. I hope that all new descriptions from this time are now included.
- Many small corrections of errors. Thanks to many contributors for helpful hints!

27.2.2024 Version 18.4
- The bugs in the search function have finally been fixed (except a small sorting issue within the results for a species).
- Changed IPNI-Data as of February 10th, 2024 imported.
- Notable additions: the exceptional monograph of Geranium by Aedo (2023) and the revised Thesium checklist by Nickrent et al. (2024)
- Many small updates and corrections in Ferns (thanks for Christopher Hoess as always)
- Dan Nickrent has revised the first half of Santalales (through Loranthaceae), leading to a much improved, up-to-date checklist. Thanks to Dan for this!
- Activation of the old "Sudre-Names" in Rubus is now complete. This increased the number of microspecies (and French species) by over 2.000! Like in other "critical" genera with lots of apomicts, the country statistics get severely biased when such monstrous numbers of apomicts are involved (compare also Hieracium in Scandinavia, Great Britain or Iceland, as well as Ranunculus auricomus in Scandinavia...)

30.12.2023 Version 18.3
- New IPNI-Data as of December 28th, 2023 imported.
- Fixed a few data bugs.
- Have started to import Zahn's Revision (1923) of Pilosella. Because some Scandinavian "Hieracium" names are in reality belonging to Pilosella (and are synonyms there), the total number of recognized species is decreased by about 100, all in Hieracium.
- For the genus Rubus, many names of old "Sudre-Taxa" were reactivated and the new combinations by Belhacène (2023) included, because the French experts consider most of them as validly published names with types. This increases the number of (micro-)species considerably by over 1000 - more to follow! France alone has over 2000 microspecies in Rubus now.

5.12.2023 Version 18.2
New IPNI-Data as of November 29th, 2023 imported. Total number of recognized species climbs by about 180.
Fixed some formatting errors (remaining ANSI code), and another fair number of duplicates in synonyms. Thanks to David Schellenberger-Costa of Leipzig for helping here! The duplicates should now be completely eliminated. Fixed also some wrong numbers in the linear sequence (those are not automatically but manually assigned which sometimes is prone to typos).
Phylogeny of Proteaceae revised, based on Onstein et al. 2016. I was not able to locate newer general phylogenies (if somebody knows one I would be grateful for hints).
Added more books, checklists and monographs:
- All 4 volumes of the latest checklist "Handbook of the Flowering Plants of Nepal" (Rajbhandari et al. 2017-2023), containing many new records for Nepal, as well as extensive corrections of previous records. It seems only one more volume (Asterales) is missing in the series.
- The "Flore Illustrée du Tchad" (César & Chatelain 2019), with many additions for this often neglected, mostly arid Sahel country.
- The 3 volumes of "Materials to the Orchid Flora of Colombia" by Szlachetko et al. (2017-2020), clarifying a lot of dubious taxa especially for terrestrial orchids. But unfortunately there seems to be some oversplitting by the authors, which has not been accepted by other experts.
- The first Rubiaceae volume (15/1) of Flora of Thailand.
- 3 recently published volumes (9, 17 and 24) of the "Flora of India" series, but since there is a new synonymic checklist for India, there are few changes resulting except some additional distribution data.

20.11.2021 User numbers for both worldplants.de and flora-germanica.de are steadily increasing and are now consistently over 10.000 individual visitors and almost 20.000 visits per month. Thank you all for your interest!

18.11.2023 Version 18.1
Significant new papers: the split of Calea (Asteraceae) into several genera by Pruski (2023). Paepalanthus (Eriocaulaceae) split in many genera by Andrino & Sano (2023).
- Imported the "Index nominum supragenericorum" by Reveal (see in plantsystematics.org), which is the most complete database for suprageneric names up to ca. 2010. This resulted in many corrections and additions, and some tribus and subtribus which previously were believed to be "ined.", now have names.
Have added/compared several new books, checklists and floras, notably:
- The monumental and long-awaited Flora of Samoa (Whistler 2022), closing a big gap in the taxonomy of the Pacific (the remaining major areas with data deficits being Vanuatu and Tonga)
- The Hymenophyllaceae volume (Series II, vol. 5) of Flora Malesiana (Iwatsuki & Ebihara 2023) which clarifies many doubtful taxa in this confusing group. Subsequently the number of recognized Fern species is somewhat reduced.
- Distribution data for several minor, so far neglected countries and regions of Europe: Andorra (checklist: Carillo 2008), Lampedusa Island (Bartolo et al. 1988) and Pantelleria (various checklists). The Isole Pelagie (Lampedusa, Linosa) and Pantelleria have been separated as regions. Especially Pantelleria - while belonging to Europe - is more related to the close-by Tunisia.
- The two Orchid volumes for the Mascarene Islands, also long awaited and completing the Flore de la Mascareignes. Many wrong records were clarified and eliminated, lowering the numbers especially for La Réunion significantly (but it still remains a highly diverse island compared to its size).
- The first two volumes (of 6 planned) of the "Flora Basarabiei" for Moldova, adding many distribution records for this neglected "new" country. The recently published Vol. 4 is not yet accessible for me (if somebody could donate a pdf this would be appreciated!).
- Included a previously overlooked paper of Renvoize (1975) which contains checklists for several minor atolls and coral islands of the western Indian Ocean, notably Aldabra (and surrounding islands) and some southern Seychelles outliers. The Aldabra list was significantly expanded. Data for the mysterious, but inhabited Agalega Island were taken from the only existing, but really old checklist (Bojer 1831).
- Several new volumes of Flore du Gabon and Flore de l'Afrique Centrale (FAC), both series rapidly nearing completion. But since the series were started more than 60 years ago, the initial volumes are much outdated and would desperately need a makeover (like Madagascar, too).
- The "Timonius of Borneo" monography (Chen & Wong 2023), describing 67 (!) new species of this megadiverse Rubiaceae genus.
- Revised Ranunculus Sect. Batrachium based on the last monography by Wiegleb et al. (2017) and new publications.

29.10.2023 Major update 18.0 and finish of revisions
- The reactivation of previously deleted synonyms has been completed also for the families which are not curated for Catalogue of Life. Total number of names climbs up to 1.393.520.
- The revision of the core dataset and re-inclusion of old synonyms is now really complete, and the whole set seems to be in a reasonable shape. Almost all countries have fairly good distribution data (well, a few could use better datasets...).
- This justifies a version upgrade to 18.0. From now on, changes will be less sweeping than before and only for newly published literature (new flora volumes, genus revisions, phylogenetic work, new names and taxa, new checklists, etc.).

24.10.2023 Update 17.1
- New IPNI data imported as of October 17th, 2023
- Fixed a few taxonomic issues
- Important phylogeny paper: Celastrales reorganized by Simmons (2023)
- Miscellaneous taxonomic revisions, reducing the number of accepted species again by about 700. This should mostly complete the "species reduction" by having a critical look at dubious or provisionally accepted species. The number of synonyms goes up accordingly.
- The number of omitted uncertain, "unplaced" species goes down significantly to about 30.000.

5.9.2023 Update 17.0
The major issues with the search have been fixed (with only a few very minor things to go). Thank you for your patience, and apologies.
- New IPNI data imported as of September 20th, 2023
- Miscellaneous taxonomic revisions, mostly in Monocots, reducing the number of accepted species significantly by about 700.
- Have eliminated another fairly high number of duplicates in synonyms, which were caused by the "reactivation" of doubtful names in 2022. I hope that this was now the last such batch. Thanks to David Schellenberger-Costa of Leipzig who wrote an efficient program for identification of such duplicates.

16.8.2023 Update 16.3
New IPNI data imported as of August 14th, 2023.
Miscellaneous taxonomic updates and corrections. Total number of recognized species remains about stable (newly described species compensate for the loss by elimination of doubtful species), but amount of synonyms increased by about 4,000.

29.7.2023 Update 16.2
New IPNI data imported as of July 17th, 2023.
Notable new papers: revision of genus concepts in Sapotaceae by Swenson et al. (2023) and split of Senega from Polygala (s. l.) by Pastore et al. (2023). Split of Selaginellaceae into 19 genera by X.-M. Zhou & Li-Bing Zhang (2023).
Revisions in Poaceae completed, reducing the number of recognized species further by about 200.
Many corrections and additions in Ferns (thank you, Christopher Hoess, as always, for input).

16.6.2023 Update 16.1
Mostly revisions in Poaceae, which reduced the number of recognized species by about 200 (by elimination of many doubtful names with uncertain status). On the contrary, about 3,000 names were added to the synonyms.
Some corrections of mistakes.

3.6.2023 Update 16.0
Thorough revision (June 2022 - June 2023) and update of the core dataset are complete for the families included in Catalogue of Life data transfer.
Previously (before June 2022) excluded synonyms of somewhat doubtful status (about 200,000) have all been checked and re-added, to make the dataset comparable to the other checklists.
- New IPNI data added as of May 30th, 2023
- Additional distribution data for some previously neglected countries completed
- Revision of family Orchidaceae complete
- Newly caused duplicates fully eliminated
- Long-text distribution data are reorganized, their sequence now standardized and in geographical order. See also the "Country Stats" page for codes and full sequence.

13.5.2023 Update 15.3
- New IPNI data as of April 30th, 2023 included
- Geographical sorting of long-text distribution data fully completed
- Additional distribution data for some previously neglected countries completed up to family 321
- Revision of family Orchidaceae about 2/3 complete
- Newly caused duplicates partially eliminated (about 2/3 done)
- Have transferred Fern data (Version 15.2, April 10th) to the PPG-II consortium for further revision

13.4.2023
The reorganization of the long-text distribution data was started. Those will be sorted in geographical sequence (following the "country stats" sequence and the regional code numbers which are already used in the three letter codes). Since all data resulting from semi-automatic sorting have to be manually controlled, the process will need quite some time. Currently it is done for families 001-168 (ferns to monocots). Undoubtedly this will also result in some bugs within the distribution field, so please have patience.
I think the geographical sequence is more logical than the alphabetical sequence which is used in other databases. In some cases regions with introductions will come first in the sequence which is also not perfect, but has to be accepted.

1.4.2023 Update 15.2
- New IPNI-Data as of March 30th, 2023, included
- Complete revision of Ferns and Lycophytes, with more standardization of the literature citations.
- Many synonyms added (about 2,000 more) which means that hopefully now all published names in Ferns and Lycophytes are included (about 1,300 remain in the "unplaced" list, see in WorldFerns).
- Total amount of recognized species down by a few dozen. This was mostly due to Japanese fern hybrids which were for a while counted as full species.
- Have started to critically review the Orchid chapter (to be finished in the next week) which also led to a significant reduction in recognized species (probably a few 100 in total).

9.3.2023 Update 15.1
- Fixed a few taxonomic mistakes and bugs
- Many literature citations in Ferns were standardized. Some of the used data go back to the digitalization (manual re-typing) of the old Index Filicum in the 1990s. So it is about time to streamline this.
- Currently I am working on revision and streamlining of WorldFerns, because the database will be used soon for the "PPG II" project. More "unplaced" and unassigned names in Ferns were identified - with some effort. But this will not work for all of them. Also, some more synonyms were added, mostly old stuff.
- Started to add more distribution data for some neglected or "difficult" countries (not yet complete)

6.3.2023 New Version 15.0
- Finally, many missing synonyms were added. This issue was caused several years ago, when I decided to unlist all uncertain or slightly uncertain synonyms, in order to not confuse the reader. Also, the previous system was overwhelmed when a species had several 100 synonyms. In the meantime POWO and LCVP have listed all those names, and WorldPlants was criticized for > 200 K synonyms missing. So I have them listed, again, and the new system is able to handle them.
The 45.000 names which are really unclear (unplaced, doubtful and cannot be assigned) are still omitted, unlike in POWO. One exception, however: in WorldFerns I have listed them in a separate "unassigned names" file where the reader can see them all.
I do not think that adding those mostly very old, unplaced names into the database creates much value for the user. If somebody wants to excavate those names, he can go to IPNI and search for them.
- IPNI data are imported until March 3rd, 2023.
- The presentation of the distribution data was refined (red for introduced species, different letter sizes and boldface, etc.). Hopefully the readability was improved. More changes coming!

27.2.2023 Update 14.11
This is the last update before the big version change to 15.0 after completion of the revision, which is expected in a few days.
- Complete revision of Asterales up to Escalloniales (Family 514), leaving only the rest of Apiales/Dipsacales (about 5 % of Dicotyledonae).
- Total number of accepted species - expectedly - dropping by about 100.

15.2.2023 Update 14.10
Complete revision of Lamiales (up to family 480). Total number of accepted species again slightly reduced, but synonyms increased.
Have fixed a major bug in the general search. Now the results are displayed properly and in sequence, as well as the parent species of each synonym found. [There are still some duplicates in the search result list, but this will be fixed soon.]

8.2.2023 Update 14.9
Inclusion of IPNI data as of February 1st, 2023. Total species count increased by about 100 because of the newly described species.
Complete revision of Cornales, Ericales (etc.), Gentianales and first half of Lamiales (up to family 471, Rehmanniaceae).
Linear sequence of Ferns revised, based on new Fern phylogeny ("Fern Tree of Life") by Nitta et al. (2022) [who used WorldFerns as basis and database!]. Fortunately, the Fern families themselves remained unchanged.
Further Fern taxonomy updates coming from Chris Hoess (thank you as always!).
Fixed a few minor formatting errors found by users (thank you for this).

25.1.2023 Update 14.8
Revision of Caryophyllales (complete), up to family 414.

15.1.2023 Update 14.7
Revision of Capparales, Santalales and Caryophyllales p. p. (up to family 385, Caryophyllaceae, plus Cactaceae). Total species count changes only slightly (about 200 less); amount of synonyms increased significantly.

31.12.2022 Update 14.6
Revision of Myrtales up to Malvales and first part of Capparales (up to family 344), reducing total number of recognized species slightly (by about 150), but accordingly increasing the synonym count.

16.12.2022 Update 14.5
New IPNI-data as of Dec 16th included.
Revision of Rosaceae through Onagraceae (up to family 289), (re-)adding many synonyms which were excluded previously because of inconvenience for the user and because it would have overwhelmed my previous database programs.
The total amount of recognized valid species goes down by about 200.
This results in long synonym lists especially in Rosaceae. In some taxa (like several Rosa-species or cultivated fruit trees) they were deliberately shortened by omitting minor forms and subvariants. Otherwise the lists would be too long for convenience (Rosa canina alone would have > 1000 synonyms).
Still, some typical cultivar names like "plena" or "pendula" were usually omitted through the whole database. For complete synonym lists in those cases please consult IPNI.

4.12.2022 Update 14.4
Revision of Fabales (up to family 259), adding about 10.000 synonyms which were temporarily excluded (doubtful status and not in ILDIS) but are included now again. The total number of recognized species goes down slightly (by about 200) because of clarification of doubtful taxa.
New IPNI data will be added before end of the year.
Next revision coming: Rosaceae through Onagraceae.

21.11.2022 Update 14.3
Thorough revision of Gymnosperms / basal Angiosperms (Cycadaceae through Annonaceae) and the first 20 % of Dicotyledonae (Ceratophyllaceae through Malpighiales, up to family 255). The number of recognized species was reduced significantly (by ca. 1000) and synonym number was increased by at least 10.000. But the amount of uncertain species also could be lowered significantly.
More revisions and updates are ongoing - I hope to complete a full revision of most Dicotyledons through this winter, to bring them to the same status as Ferns and most Monocots already have. Currently in the works, but not yet online is Fabaceae and Rosaceae.

15.10.2022 Update 14.2 - Major Update
- New IPNI data imported as of October 14th, 2022.
- The new Annotated Checklist of Flowering Plants of India (Mao & Dash 2020, 3 volumes) has been completely included (over 21.000 species in full synonymy, about 1/15th of the total World Flora). This covers one of the last remaining "big gaps" in species verification using local checklists and floras. The quality of the India checklist is somewhat fluctuating - several families are already quite outdated, others are very good. Hundreds of doubtful names could be eliminated, and accordingly the worldwide total number of recognized species is reduced, but the percentage of verified species much increased.
- New checklist of Chile (Rodriguez et al. 2018) completely included, which is a significant improvement over the Catalogo do Cono Sur and the older Chile checklist. This list covers also Isla da Pascua (Easter Island), Islas Desventuradas and the Juan Fernandez Archipelago.
- Revised classification and checklist of genus Viola (670 species) adapted from Marcussen et al. (2022), which led to much clarification of uncertain names, but also to resurrection of many split species, especially in North America. The total number of recognized species nevertheless decreased significantly.
- Familie Juncaceae completely revised, mostly based on the worldwide treatment by Kirschner (2002) and some subsequent papers
- Revised classification and phylogeny of Melastomataceae based on the detailed monograph by Goldenberg et al. (2022)
- Orchidaceae: Genus Epidendrum with almost 2000 species completely updated - all volumina of Icones Orchidacearum included.
- Revision of Genus Euphorbia for South Africa (Bruyns 2022, two volumes) included, which led to a major reduction in species count - there were way too many taxa described.
- Iridaceae of southern Africa (Goldblatt & Manning 2020) included, with about 1100 species covered and much taxonomic rearrangement and reduction of species numbers
- Flora of the Cook Islands (Sykes 2016) included, which led to many changes and additions, especially for the very species-rich Rarotonga Island.
- Completely revised genus Rubus for Europe by inclusion of the Distribution Atlas (Kurtto et al. 2015).
- Several new volumes of Floras of Gabon, Cameroon and Flore Afrique Centrale included.
- Nomenclature of Gesneriaceae fully revised and many fragmentary literature citations completed
- Several new genus revisions included
- New Checklist of San Marino (Alessandrini et al. 2022) included, species numbers more than tripled. So far only a very old flora (Pampanini 1930) was existing for this small country.
- Distribution Atlas of genus Alchemilla for Europe included

5.9.2022 The new page "Literature survey" has been added, being a compilation of the most important newer Floras, Field Guides and Checklists (sources more than 50 years old have been added only in exceptional cases). This long list has been compiled with the help and assistance of Alexey Shipunov - thanks to Alexey for this invaluable help, which also included supply of many long needed books! I hope for many additions and corrections by the users.

21.8.2022 Update 14.1
- Have eliminated about 2,000 duplicate names which were identified through a database analysis and cross-check by a Leipzig team led by David Schellenberger-Costa; in preparation for an upcoming publication. Thanks to David for this! 98 % of the duplicates were in synonyms but very few duplicates listed as valid were verified.
- Other inconsistencies were addressed, too (including some author names like Gray/A. Gray).
- IPNI-data as of August 20th, 2022 and a few minor papers were added.

2.8.2022 New Version 14.0
- Have added over 30,000 pictures of vascular plants consisting of the Germany, Alps, Rhodos and Pennsylvania/New Jersey data sets in flora-germanica.de.
- The total is now ca. 38,300 pictures of ca. 15,700 taxa. More pictures are coming soon.
- Many corrections, distribution and taxonomy updates in Ferns based on meticulous work by Christopher Hoess (thank you for this!).

25.7.2022 Update 13.3
- IPNI data imported as of July 24th, 2022.
- added a few 100 pictures of Monocotyledonae (mostly German flora)

2.7.2022 Update 13.2
- IPNI data imported as of July 1st, 2022, adding about 40 new species
- Started to include pictures for non-Ferns and non-Orchids. This will cover initially mostly the Germany (central European) flora for which I have about 6.000 species in pictures. More pictures will be added gradually.

22.6.2022 The month of May was the first month with more than 10.000 unique visitors per month at worldplants.de (excluding bots)! Page calls are of course a multiple of this. Thank you for all your interest. User numbers are steadily climbing.

21.6.2022 Update 13.1
- IPNI data imported as of June 19th, 2022, adding about 160 new species in total
- German checklist of Hand et al. (2022, www.kp-buttler.de) now completely imported, adding about 40.000 old names in total, many of them not yet in IPNI. Apologies if some duplicate synonyms have been created. Also for most of these names, the full literature citation is still missing, only page and year are listed. The literature citations will be added slowly over time.
- Relatively few phylogeny papers added, none very large
- Noteworthy monography: Barboza et al. (2022) for the genus Capsicum, clarifying many names
- Taxonomy of newly published Flora Germanica books (Hassler & Muer 2022, see www.flora-germanica.de) now adopted for Germany
- Imported many - mostly older - Hieracium and Pilosella names which were meticulously curated in the German checklist of Gottschlich (2020).
- Fixed many small errors reported by users (thank you for this!)
- Some fern pictures are still waiting for input, I have not found time for this. If you see some "missing picture" in ferns, those will pop up soon.

29.5.2022 New version 13.0
- New "country checklist" function established (see "country stats"), which gives the complete (non-synonymic) checklist for a country or region as output.
- New phylogenies for several large families (published in Am. J. Bot. 107, 2021).
- Imported ca. 60 % of the Germany checklist of Hand et al. (2022), including numerous older synonyms on variety- and subspecies-level which have not yet been in IPNI. Working on importing the rest of the data (which is a lot of work and will need a few more weeks). Please be aware that probably some duplicate synonyms have resulted which will be eliminated slowly.
- IPNI-data imported as of May 27th, 2022, including numerous older synonyms on variety-level which were newly included in IPNI
- Included the Hungary-Checklist of Kiraly et al. 2011 which had been overlooked so far (Hungary was covered not really well in the previous data, based only on Flora Europaea).
- Included some new phylogeny papers

7.3.2022 Update 12.11. New IPNI data imported as of March 3rd, 2022.
New reorganization and phylogeny of the Mammillaria group (Cactaceae, Sánchez et al. 2022).
Spent quite some time with Gymnospermae, adding literature citations, streamlining taxonomy (mostly following Farjon 2017) and revising doubtful species. So far this group was admittedly somewhat neglected by me. Now it should be in much better shape.
Included the tribe Phyllantheae revision of Bowman et al. (2022) with very many new combinations.
Started to add the very detailed synonymy of the "Florenliste für Deutschland" (Hand et al., version 12.0, 2022) which meticulously covers very many infraspecific taxa. Will need quite some time to complete this. I am grateful for the permission to do so.

18.2.2022 Update 12.10. New IPNI data transferred as of February 6th, 2022. Many old names (19th century) did get more precise information, and literature citations were added in many cases.
Major new phylogeny of Apiaceae (Clarkson et al. 2021) which clarified much, especially in the basal groups. But the system in the more advanced groups (like Torilidinae) remains somewhat unclear and needs much more work.
Major new phylogeny of Acanthaceae (Manzitto-Tripp et al. 2022) including all genera, which is a big improvement in this family which had so far only sketchy data. But work remains especially in the monster-genus Justicia.
Orchid phylogeny was refined by input taken from the system of Chase et al. (2015). The new orchid phylogeny by Pérez-Escobar et al. 2021 more or less confirmed the existing system but did contain only the suprageneric entities and did not go down to generic level.

9.1.2022 Update 12.9: Eliminated several 1000 duplicate names through the whole database (almost all in synonyms), using the new checking tool from Catalogue of Life. IPNI data imported as of January 7th, 2022. New phylogeny of Rutaceae (Applehans et al. 2021). Many small updates and corrections in Ferns (thanks mostly to Chris Hoess). Many literature imports, notably the new Poaceae volumes of Flora Iberica.

5.12.2021 Update 12.8. Used a new database tool by Catalogue of Life to check for duplicate names and cleaned the whole database (at least the part included in COfL). This eliminated a few 100 duplicates, 99% of them in synonyms. Fortunately, only very few valid names were duplicate. Thanks to the programmers of COfL who created this really useful tool! Another ca. 1500 duplicate names (again mostly synonyms, only a few valid names) of "non-COfL taxa" are still pending and will be included in the next update.
Included the 2015 checklist of Ferns of Brazil, which created some headaches regarding distribution and taxonomy, but eliminated a few doubtful names.

27.11.2021 Update 12.7. Included the new Checklist of New Guinea which was a very welcome addition and clarified many doubtful names. Unfortunately there is still no differentiation between mainland Papua and Bismarck Archipelago in this checklist.
Added IPNI updates as of November 23rd, 2021.
Some major phylogenetic papers included, for example dismantling of Dysoxylum (Meliaceae) by Holzmeyer et al. 2021, new Cyperaceae classification by Larridon et al. 2021 or Andropogoneae (Poaceae) systematics by Welker et al. 2020.

7.11.2021 Update 12.6. A number of changes in Ferns, especially Thelypteridaceae. Thanks to Chris Hoess, Susan Fawcett and Alan R. Smith for plenty of input.
Included Flora Malesiana (Lamiaceae, 2019) which eliminated a large number of uncertain names in the former Verbenaceae (Premna, etc.).
Cactaceae phylogeny completely revised according to newest available papers (but there is still much in flux especially within the tribes).

14.10.2021 Update 12.5. IPNI-data (new names) as of October 8th, 2021 are imported. Some major reviews imported, especially in Orchids (Chase et al.). New Calyceraceae phylogeny adapted from Pozner et al. 2021.
Finally I found the time to include Flora Mesoamericana (Piperaceae) with numerous changes in Piper and Peperomia, and also the revised Orchidaceae-Pleurothallidinae genera by Karremans (2016) including subsequent publications.
Plenty of changes in Ferns: new Thelypteridaceae genera and combinations (Fawcett & Smith 2021), new checklist for Honduras (Reyes-Chávez 2021) and the new Flora of the Marquesas (Lorence & Wagner 2019), as well as numerous small corrections from users.

25.8.2021 User numbers for both worldplants.de and flora-germanica.de remain high and holding steady at 8.000 individual visitors per month and 12.000 visits per month. Thank you all for your interest!

6.8.2021 Update 12.4. IPNI-data (new names) as of August 3rd, 2021 are imported. Some taxonomic errors and omissions fixed (especially in Ferns). Thanks to many contributors!
New Saxifragaceae phylogeny adapted from Folk et al. (2021).

23.6.2021 The bug in the search function has been found and fixed.

20.6.2021 A major bug in the search routines has been identified - if search results are too many and are divided down into letters, then the letters (A-Z) cannot be clicked on resp. do not deliver results. We are working on a fix. This did work previously so it should be solvable. Apologies to all users.

28.5.2021 Update 12.3. The below described bug has been fixed. Also some literature added (2 recent volumes of Flora Zambesiaca, the Piperaceae volume of Flora Mesoamericana, etc.).

25.5.2021 Bug discovered: Some users found a significant bug which fortunately occurs only sporadically (otherwise we would have noticed it earlier). If a species "2" (which contains subspecies) follows another species "1" (which contains variants), the headline of species 2 is suppressed. We are working on a fix but will need 2-3 days for it. In total this might affect probably 100-200 cases in the whole database.

23.5.2021 Traffic count: For the first time more than 10.000 individual users per month were recorded. Thank you all.

11.5.2021 Update 12.2. IPNI-Data until 7.5.2021 included.
Relatively little work done with publications and papers (had other priorities). Some newly received volumes of country floras still awaiting inclusion.
Some bugfixes, display and program improvements.

14.3.2021 Update 12.1. IPNI-Data until 13.3.2021 included. Some taxonomical rearrangements in Fabaceae/Fabeae.
Improvements: Search Function now much improved (display of search results more clearly indicated and labeled "valid" or "synonym").
Display of subspecies, varieties etc. improved (standardized tabs) to show rank more clearly.
Taxonomy: "Pandanaceae project" for family Pandanaceae was imported, which reduced the number of valid species greatly (from about 1100 to 778) and eliminated tons of uncertain names. Now the number of valid species is close to the estimated correct number.

1.3.2021 Major Update 12.0. IPNI-Data from 2010-2021 have been carefully crosschecked and a significant number of species added which were with some delay added in IPNI and therefore not available in WorldPlants up to now. So the newly described taxa should be all in, at least up to January 2021. Species total climbs to 352.093.
Also, some minor bugfixes and layout improvements.
A few corrections suggested by users (thanks to everybody who contributed).
Catalogue of Life have resolved their update issues and will start regular updates again in March. The data of WP version 12.0 will be synchronized into COfL probably mid-March.

9.2.2021 Update 11.5: Layout improvement: Both World Ferns and World Orchids have now their own "Country Stats" listing.
Search Function box made longer due to requests from various users.
Over 100 additional Taiwanese fern pictures (provided by Ralf Knapp - thank you again!) added, as well as some nomenclatural updates for Taiwanese ferns.
About 80 Fern species and ca. 200 Basal Angiosperm and Monocot species described between 2017 and 2020 were added, which were overlooked previously because of delayed addition in IPNI. Fern total goes up to 12.882 (from 12.798).

4.2.2021 Major Update 11.4. Improved search function now available! You can search for countries, names and everything else in combination with families. This enables for example to search for "Lycopodiaceae in Turkey" or similar. This feature had been requested by many users.
Country Checklists can now be generated from a new button in "Country Stats". Those generated country checklists are NOT synonymic but enable to jump from the latin name into the full checklist.
Data for "small countries" Brunei, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Channel Islands were completed (see comments from 23.1.2021).
Sunda-Sahul-Checklist added fully (at least the believable part of the data), which resulted in improved lists and counts for Sulawesi, Borneo, Lesser Sunda Isl., Cambodia, Thailand and Moluccas.
IPNI data added up to Feb 1st, 2021. Some literature added (notable: split of Schefflera (Araliaceae) now complete).
Phylogenetic sequence of Rhamnaceae was updated following new results.
A bug in the search function was removed: clicking names in the results jumps directly to this species (and not to the genus header).
Some bugs in the data removed (thanks to many people who contributed).

23.1.2021 The neglected "small and new" countries/regions in Europe: Data have now been added for Channel Islands, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein, which all were not included in the distribution codes in Flora Europaea. Those data will show up in the next update. The only "remnants" in Europe without complete data are San Marino (old flora of Pampanini 1930 not accessible), Moldova, Vatican City and Monaco; also parts of "former Yugoslavia" (Bosnia & Hercegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Northern Macedonia) which have incomplete data (checklists have only partially been published for most of them).

11.1.2021 Minor Update 11.3, main reason were several bugfixes. Added some data for Malesia distributions. No new IPNI data. Two families in Boraginales were previously not displayed properly as families. Now the correct family number stands at 525. CountryStats-Table was updated with more literature.

7.1.2021 Several bugfixes. Most important: Statistics in "Country Stats" did not display all lines for a while. Now everything is back to normal. Content in the "Distribution fields" as long as it was in double brackets, did not display, and author abbreviations with "F." were confused with "f." for formae and therefore not displayed properly. Those issues are fixed, too. Still working on other improvements, hopefully coming soon.

4.1.2021 The major new update 11.2 is online, including IPNI data up to December 28th, 2020 (unfortunately IPNI is well behind due to Covid etc.). Included are many changes and adaptations in phylogeny, using numerous new publications. Some errors of 11.1 (including a few temporarily missing genera) are fixed. Problems with the "Š" and "š" characters had to be fixed by replacing with simple "S" and "s". Checklists for Cambodia (big improvement), Laos (not so good), Orchid checklist for Myanmar (very good) and the grass checklist of India are included. The inclusion of the new "Sunda-Sahul" checklist (Joyce et al. 2020) has started but this turned out to be extremely difficult - this list is a hodgepodge, artificially assembled conglomerate of several more or less incomplete checklists with many omissions and taxonomic chaos. Nevertheless there are some valuable data in it, they just have to be found.
A very interesting threshold was reached coming from below: 352.000 recognized species which seems to be a reasonably accurate number and is exactly where my estimates within the last years had arrived (some other estimates like Lugadha et al. with 390.000 were clearly too high but based only on projections). About 10.000 remain "unconfirmed", which means only about half of them might be valid, but on the other hand about 1.000-1.500 are still being described every year, and another 500 synonymized every year. So for the next 5 years or so the recognized total should hover between 352.000 and 356.000.

14.12.2020 Search function: We recognize that the search function is sometimes deficient. The two search options "Search" and "Filter" cannot be combined. We received many suggestions that it should be possible to search for "distribution" (countries or regions) together with "family" or "latin name". This will be realized with a new button in "Search" but will need a couple of weeks for inclusion. Also, the "next genus" button in "Filter" does not jump to the next family. We recommend to use the "linear sequence" followed by STRG-F which creates the quickest and most flexible way to jump to a specific position in the phylogenetic sequence (and see the neighboring taxa).

13.12.2020 Inclusion of new checklists: The next major update is in preparation and hopefully completed end of December. Several major checklists are now available: new checklists for Cambodia (Cho et al. 2016) and Laos (Jin et al. 2016), an orchid checklist for Myanmar (Aung et al. 2020) and a grass checklist for India (Kellogg et al. 2020). I have to admit that I had overlooked the Cambodia and Laos lists. Especially Cambodia is very welcome and closes one of the biggest gaps countrywise, with about 40% of species previously missing.

13.12.2020 New Catalogue of Life: The Catalogue of Life has overhauled their complete infrastructure and put the new one live (www.catalogueoflife.org). Congratulations! In the last 12 months their updates were understandably slow, but they are catching up and the October Worldplants data should be live now. The new December 8th update of WorldPlants is being processed and the data will appear before end of the year.

12.12.2020 Bug in World Orchids: Because the family numbers changed, the World Orchids special site did for a while not work (it was referencing to the old family number). This is fixed in the meantime but the Orchid statistics in "country stats" are still showing wrong (too low) numbers. Will hopefully be corrected soon.

11.12.2020 Deep Links: Please keep in mind that stable deep links have the following format (Lycopodium clavatum as example):

Genus: www.worldplants.de?deeplink=Lycopodium

Species: www.worldplants.de?deeplink=Lycopodium-clavatum

Many users (and unfortunately also Wikipedia!) have used the temporary flag numbers occurring during searches in the top line. Those flag numbers are needed for the "backspace"-function. If you copy and use those, they redirect to the main page and are not useful as deep links.

10.12.2020 Cross-references between Flora Germanica and World Plants: Since we have split the former website into two (Flora Germanica [including Rhodos, Alps, Karlsruhe and Pennsylvania] and World Plants) some users were confused. We have added new buttons in the top row to switch between both sites.

8.12.2020 Old Website put to rest: The old website was finally retired and redirect links to the new websites installed (we had kept it alive for 6 months but the dataset in the old website was not updated since early 2020 and is now outdated). A big thank you to the KIT people who helped out. It was a pleasure working with you during the last 15 years. In the beginning the redirects went only to Flora Germanica which confused some users but this is fixed now.

8.12.2020: Major new update 11.1: The new update focuses mostly on phylogenetic sequence. Many references, especially Cole et al. (posters), Johansson (angio.bergianska.se) and numerous new publications were perused to create a new and much improved phylogenetic sequence. Several families were newly recognized, most importantly in Boraginales (following the Boraginales Working Group). The former Euphorbiaceae (so far "s. lat." in Kubitzki-circumscription) were split in four (Phyllanthaceae, Picrodendraceae, Peraceae and Euphorbiaceae s. str.), as practically every new reference does. This results in changed family numbers and a total family count of 525 (some changes still pending and will be included in the late December update).

15.11.2020 Removal of spaces in author names: For further standardization a new filter automatically removes the spaces between first names of authors (for example W.D.J.Koch instead of W. D. J. Koch). We have not yet "caught" all cases which apply, and sometimes there might be inconsistencies - we are still working on it.

1.8.2020 Inauguration of the new Website and new user interface with Version 11.0. Migration of all data from the previous KIT-Website into worldplants.de.