Regional floras, a significant modern trend in plant taxonomy

Besides through monographic work plant taxonomy has a second way of framing synthetic attempts and that is by compiling Florulas and Floras, containing a complete account of the flora of parts of the globe, of cities, islets, islands, states, countries, or continents. Irrespective of their style, concise or elaborate, their elaboration is closely connected with the history of the exploration of the areas they deal with. And the latter is again closely connected with the history of the opening and discovering of the world by science, that is human history. The course of the history of the botanical exploration and the compilation of Floras, small and large, was besides to a high degree dependent on the activity of botanical explorers and botanical centres in Europe. Among these Floras there are small or at least restricted ones which I will call ”local Floras”, dealing mostly with a more or less local politically or administratively defined country, and large ones which I will call ”regional Floras”.