Flora is all the
plant
Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae excl ...
life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring (
indigenous
Indigenous may refer to:
*Indigenous peoples
*Indigenous (ecology), presence in a region as the result of only natural processes, with no human intervention
*Indigenous (band), an American blues-rock band
*Indigenous (horse), a Hong Kong racehorse ...
)
native plants. Sometimes
bacteria
Bacteria (; singular: bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one biological cell. They constitute a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria were am ...
and
fungi
A fungus ( : fungi or funguses) is any member of the group of eukaryotic organisms that includes microorganisms such as yeasts and molds, as well as the more familiar mushrooms. These organisms are classified as a kingdom, separately fr ...
are also referred to as flora, as in the terms ''
gut flora
Gut microbiota, gut microbiome, or gut flora, are the microorganisms, including bacteria, archaea, fungi, and viruses that live in the digestive tracts of animals. The gastrointestinal metagenome is the aggregate of all the genomes of the gut m ...
'' or ''
skin flora
Skin flora, also called skin microbiota, refers to microbiota ( communities of microorganisms) that reside on the skin, typically human skin.
Many of them are bacteria of which there are around 1,000 species upon human skin from nineteen phyla.P ...
''.
Etymology
The word "flora" comes from the
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
name of
Flora
Flora is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring ( indigenous) native plants. Sometimes bacteria and fungi are also referred to as flora, as in the terms '' gut flora'' or '' skin flora''.
...
, the
goddess
A goddess is a female deity. In many known cultures, goddesses are often linked with literal or metaphorical pregnancy or imagined feminine roles associated with how women and girls are perceived or expected to behave. This includes themes ...
of
plant
Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae excl ...
s,
flower
A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants (plants of the division Angiospermae). The biological function of a flower is to facilitate reproduction, usually by providing a mechanis ...
s, and fertility in
Roman mythology
Roman mythology is the body of myths of ancient Rome as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans. One of a wide variety of genres of Roman folklore, ''Roman mythology'' may also refer to the modern study of these representa ...
. The technical term "flora" is then derived from a
metonymy
Metonymy () is a figure of speech in which a concept is referred to by the name of something closely associated with that thing or concept.
Etymology
The words ''metonymy'' and ''metonym'' come from grc, μετωνυμία, 'a change of name ...
of this goddess at the end of the sixteenth century. It was first used in poetry to denote the natural vegetation of an area, but soon also assumed the meaning of a work cataloguing such vegetation. Moreover, "Flora" was used to refer to the flowers of an artificial garden in the seventeenth century.
The distinction between
vegetation
Vegetation is an assemblage of plant species and the ground cover they provide. It is a general term, without specific reference to particular taxa, life forms, structure, spatial extent, or any other specific botanical or geographic charac ...
(the general appearance of a community) and flora (the taxonomic composition of a community) was first made by
Jules Thurmann (1849). Prior to this, the two terms were used indiscriminately.
[Thurmann, J. (1849). ''Essai de Phytostatique appliqué à la chaîne du Jura et aux contrées voisines.'' Berne: Jent et Gassmann]
[Martins, F. R. & Batalha, M. A. (2011). Formas de vida, espectro biológico de Raunkiaer e fisionomia da vegetação. In: Felfili, J. M., Eisenlohr, P. V.; Fiuza de Melo, M. M. R.; Andrade, L. A.; Meira Neto, J. A. A. (Org.). ''Fitossociologia no Brasil: métodos e estudos de caso.'' Vol. 1. Viçosa: Editora UFV. p. 44-85]
. Earlier version, 2003
Classifications
Plants are grouped into floras based on region (
Phytochorion, floristic regions), period, special environment, or climate. Regions can be distinct
habitat
In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...
s like mountain vs. flatland. Floras can mean plant life of a historic era as in ''fossil flora''. Lastly, floras may be subdivided by special environments:
*''Native flora''. The native and indigenous flora of an area.
*''Agricultural and horticultural flora (garden flora)''. The plants that are deliberately grown by humans.
*''Weed flora''. Traditionally this classification was applied to plants regarded as undesirable and studied in efforts to control or eradicate them. Today the designation is less often used as a classification of plant life since it includes three different types of plants:
weed
A weed is a plant considered undesirable in a particular situation, "a plant in the wrong place", or a plant growing where it is not wanted.Harlan, J. R., & deWet, J. M. (1965). Some thoughts about weeds. ''Economic botany'', ''19''(1), 16-24. ...
y species,
invasive species
An invasive species otherwise known as an alien is an introduced organism that becomes overpopulated and harms its new environment. Although most introduced species are neutral or beneficial with respect to other species, invasive species adv ...
(that may or may not be weedy), and native and introduced non-weedy species that are agriculturally undesirable. Many native plants previously considered weeds have been shown to be beneficial or even necessary to various
ecosystem
An ecosystem (or ecological system) consists of all the organisms and the physical environment with which they interact. These biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. Energy enters the syst ...
s.
Documentation
The flora of a particular area or time period can be documented in a publication also known as a "
flora
Flora is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring ( indigenous) native plants. Sometimes bacteria and fungi are also referred to as flora, as in the terms '' gut flora'' or '' skin flora''.
...
" (often capitalized as "Flora" to distinguish the two meanings when they might be confused). Floras may require specialist botanical knowledge to use with any effectiveness. Traditionally they are
book
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical ...
s, but some are now published on
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both com ...
or
website
A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and W ...
s.
Simon Paulli
Simon Paulli (6 April 1603 – 25 April 1680), was a Danish physician and naturalist. He was a professor of anatomy, surgery and botany at the University of Copenhagen. The genus '' Paullinia'' is named after him. 's ''Flora Danica'' of 1648 is probably the first book titled "Flora" to refer to the plant world of a certain region. It mainly describes medicinal plants growing in Denmark. The ''
Flora Sinensis
''Flora Sinensis'' is one of the first European natural history books about China, published in Vienna in 1656. Its author, Michael Boym, was a Jesuit missionary from Poland (then Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth).
The book was the first desc ...
'' by the Polish
Jesuit
, image = Ihs-logo.svg
, image_size = 175px
, caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits
, abbreviation = SJ
, nickname = Jesuits
, formation =
, founders ...
Michał Boym
Michał Piotr BoymHis first name is also often rendered as ''Michele'', ''Michel'', ''Miguel'', ''Michael Peter'' (;Transliterated also (using Wade-Giles) as ''Pu Che-yuen Mi-ko'' c. 1612 – 1659) was a Polish Jesuit missionary to China, scienti ...
is another early example of a book titled "Flora".
[Flora Sinensis]
(access to the facsimile of the book, its French translation, and an article about it) However, despite its title it covered not only plants but also some animals of the region, that is China and India.
A published flora often contains diagnostic keys. Often these are
''dichotomous'' keys, which require the user to examine a plant repeatedly, and decide which one of two alternatives given best applies to the plant.
See also
*
Biome
A biome () is a biogeographical unit consisting of a biological community that has formed in response to the physical environment in which they are found and a shared regional climate. Biomes may span more than one continent. Biome is a broader ...
— a major regional group of distinctive plant and animal communities
*
Fauna
Fauna is all of the animal life present in a particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is ''flora'', and for fungi, it is '' funga''. Flora, fauna, funga and other forms of life are collectively referred to as '' biota''. Zoo ...
*
Fauna and Flora Preservation Society
Fauna & Flora International (FFI) is an international conservation charity and non-governmental organization dedicated to protecting the planet's threatened wildlife and habitats. Founded in 1903, it is the world's oldest international conserva ...
*
Funga
In life sciences ''funga'' is a recent term for the kingdom fungi similar to the longstanding fauna for animals and flora for plants. The term was considered to be urgently needed in order to simplify projects oriented toward implementation of edu ...
– a term equivalent to flora for fungi
*
Herbal
A herbal is a book containing the names and descriptions of plants, usually with information on their medicinal, tonic, culinary, toxic, hallucinatory, aromatic, or magical powers, and the legends associated with them.Arber, p. 14. A herbal m ...
*
Horticultural flora A horticultural flora, also known as a garden flora, is a plant identification aid structured in the same way as a native plants flora. It serves the same purpose: to facilitate plant identification; however, it only includes plants that are under c ...
*
Megaflora
Megaflora (from Greek μέγας ''megas'' "large" and New Latin ''flora'' "plant life") refers to an exceptionally large plant species. Examples of megaflora include the Sequoioideae of California and a number of extinct plant species from the M ...
*
Pharmacopoeia
A pharmacopoeia, pharmacopeia, or pharmacopoea (from the obsolete typography ''pharmacopœia'', meaning "drug-making"), in its modern technical sense, is a book containing directions for the identification of compound medicines, and published by ...
*
The Plant List
The Plant List was a list of botanical names of species of plants created by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Missouri Botanical Garden and launched in 2010. It was intended to be a comprehensive record of all known names of plant species ...
*
Vegetation
Vegetation is an assemblage of plant species and the ground cover they provide. It is a general term, without specific reference to particular taxa, life forms, structure, spatial extent, or any other specific botanical or geographic character ...
— a general term for the plant life of a region
*
World Flora Online
World Flora Online is an Internet-based compendium of the world's plant species.
Description
The World Flora Online (WFO) is an open-access database, launched In October 2012 as a follow-up project to The Plant List, with the aim of publishing an ...
; Categories
*
Flora by continent
*
Flora by country
*
Flora by ecoregion
*
Flora by floristic kingdom
References
External links
''eFloras'' — a collection of on-line floras
Flora of NW Europewith descriptions and a quiz to test your knowledge
Flora of New Zealand Series Online
{{Authority control
Botanical nomenclature
Ecology terminology
Habitat
Organisms