Mapping Asia Plants: Current status of floristic information for Central Asian flora

Abstract

Central Asia, which is composed of five countries – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, is an important global biodiversity hotspot, but a botanically poorly-known part of Asia. As part of the Mapping Asia Plants (MAP) project, we reviewed the history of botanical investigations, floristic works and publications in this region, as well as key floras, checklists, herbaria and online databases in Central Asia. The published Floras and Checklists dating back to 1851 lay a solid foundation for botanical research in Central Asia today. Eight Floras (61 vol) and four Cheklists for this region were listed and introduced in this paper. At the regional level, the full eleven volumes Conspectus Florae Asiae Mediae, containing 9341 species of vascular plants belonging to 1245 genera and 161 families across Central Asia, were published during 1968–2015. At the country level, the national Floras of five countries which were published during 1932–1991, listed 5631, 3576, 4445, 2607 and 4148 species of vascular plants in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, respectively. The species counts were updated to 5658, 3927 and 2800 in the national Checklists of vascular plant in Kazakhstan (1999), Kyrgyzstan (2014) and Turkmenistan (1988), respectively. We also simply introduced the key herbaria in this region which contain about 2.5 million specimens in total. However, some major gaps and limitations, i.e. the outdate publications, national Floras mainly in local language, the massive non-digitized specimens, and the lack of an online database or platform, should be addressed in terms of their global applications.

Keywords

• Central Asia
• Flora
• Checklist
• Herbaria
• Biodiversity
• Mapping Asia plants