Mapping Asia Plants: The brief historical overview of botanical studies in European Russia

Abstract

European part of Russia covers ~1/3 of Europe, an area of approximately 3742,000 sq km. Systematic floristic research of this area began in the 19th century, with the first complete flora of European Russia by Fedchenko and Flerov (1908–1910), which contained 3542 species and many varieties. The most important modern source of floristic information on this territory are Flora partis Europaeae URSS (Tsvelev et al., 1974–1989) with Flora of Eastern Europe (Tsvelev, 1996–2004), which contain about 7300 species. The most important macroregional floristic reviews are “Flora Regionis Boreali-Orientalis Territoriae Europaeae URSS” (Tolmachev, 1974–1977), 11th edition “Flora…” of P. F. Mayevsky (2014) and “Flora of the Lower Volga region” (Skvortsov and Reshetnikova, 2006–2018, not finished). Among 46 regions (cities of Moscow, Sevastopol, and St.-Petersburg are excluded), 22 have high quality modern floristic reviews, 11 regions have average reviews, and 13 regions have low quality reviews; 13 regions have modern floristic reviews in preparation.

Keywords

• European Russia
• Vascular flora
• History of botanic investigations