The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) is one of four prominent international botanical organizations leading the effort to forge the WFO, along with the Missouri Botanical Garden, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh. An additional 30+ research institutions from many of the world’s most biologically diverse countries, including Brazil, China, Colombia, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Russia, and Thailand, have also committed to contributing content as primary partners.
Thanks to generous funding from Google and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, NYBG was able to digitally capture much of its NYBG Press holdings, beginning with the extensive Flora Neotropica Monographs series, published by the NYBG Press since 1967. These 110 volumes constitute the cumulative wealth of scientific knowledge for an estimated 8,500 of the world’s plant species, and are now being made freely-available for the very first time.
After the completion of Flora Neotropica Monographs, we were able to complete the volumes of Memoirs of The New York Botanical Garden and Brittonia. Combined, these three series contain descriptions of over 31,000 species descriptions of plants.
Finally, NYBG has also digitized and made available Gleason & Cronquist’s 1991 Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada containing over 5,800 descriptions.
Combined, NYBG is making over 37,000 species descriptions freely available to the public for the first time. This website is designed to provide open and up-to-date access to all resources generated at NYBG for the World Flora Online project, in addition to the latest research data, images and collection details for representative specimens stored at the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium, and many other forms of supplemental scholarly content from our curators.