Horticultural flora

A horticultural flora as an identification aid structured in the same way as a native flora and serving the same purpose of facilitating plant identification but it includes only those plants that are under cultivation within the prescribed region.

It includes both cultigens (plants deliberately altered in some way by human activity) and those wild plants brought directly into cultivation that do not have cultigen names. It might also include colour images and useful information specific to the region including:
* historical details about outstanding public and private cultivated plant collections
* exceptional trees (age, history, rarity, size etc.)
* prominent nurserymen and breeders
* references to the taxonomic and other literature on the plant groups
* easy "spotting" characters for identification
* notes on ecology (especially the potential to naturalise and become weedy)
* horticultural history of introduction
* conservation.

Produced by professional plant taxonomists a horticultural flora assists clarification of names, identification of plant characteristics that occur in cultivated plants that are not necessarily found in their wild counterparts, and describes cultigens that are poorly described elsewhere.

Although horticultural floras may include a range of food plants the emphasis is generally on ornamental plants and for that reason they are sometimes referred to as garden floras.

Numerous encyclopaedic listings of cultivated plants have been compiled but only four substantial horticultural floras have ever been produced, these being for: North America; [Bailey, L.H. 1924. "Manual of cultivated plants". Macmillan, New York] Europe; [Walters, S.M. et al. (eds) 1986-2000. "The European garden flora: a manual for the identification of plants cultivated in Europe, both out-of-doors and under glass". "Vols 1-6". Cambridge University Press, Melbourne. ] South-eastern Australia; [Spencer, R. 1995-2005. "Horticultural flora of south-eastern Australia". "Vols. 1-5". University of New South Wales Press, Sydney. ] Hawaii and the tropics. [Staples, G.W. & Herbst, D.R. "A tropical garden flora. Plants cultivated in the Hawaiian Islands and other tropical places". Bishop Museum Press, Honolulu. ]

ee also

* cultivated plant taxonomy
* horticultural botany
* cultigen
* cultivar
* botanical nomenclature

References