Taxonomy of British Plants

The naming of plants is a complicated business and names are constantly changing - even more so now than in the past, as molecular studies show the relationship between plants, meaning that many species have to be moved to different genera and families.

The BSBI tracks the changes in the names of British and Irish plants and produces standard lists of species that can be recorded.

Our current recommended list for fieldworker is Stace’s New Flora of the British Isles, but other books use slightly different lists and some critical taxa are not covered to species level there.

New names in Stace 3

>> Part 1 (additions) (xls)

>> part 2 (hybrids) (xls)

The Taxonomy Database

The BSBI’s Taxonomy Database contains a lot of information on synonyms, chromosome numbers and details of much literature relating to british plants.

>> Go to the ‘Leicester’ Database

British list

A handy list of British plants is one available from Richard Shotbolt’s Nature Unreserved web site. It contains names and authorities for all species, updated to Stace 3:

>> Go to the web site

Download the (now rather out of date) 2007 checklists of the British & Irish Flora here. We plan to produce a new one in 2011, following APG III precisely.

(1) BSBI 2007 list. Excel file, 922kb, showing Latin name, Authority, English name and a running integer to allow you to sort the list taxonomically.

(2) List 2007. Text file, 534kb. The same list, but with the following details:-

• accepted Latin names
• authorities (Brummit abbreviations)
• common name
• BRC number (where available)
• Kent numbers (family, genus, species, subspecies)
• status, native or alien (to be revised in future versions)
• name type, A1/2/3/AC.

Links

Archive Material

Better still than a database is being able to see the original publication and being able to interpret for yourself what the author intended at the time. There are many plant variations that have been described but which have not ultimately been accepted as taxa at the species level, so they sink out of general awareness but nevertheless are often of interest. Our aim here is to contribute towards the availability of taxonomic works that are available digitally. Bear in mind that there are many other sources of similar information; visit our Digital Archive for journals and suggestions for places to search on the web.