The Flora of China: An International Project to Describe the 31,000 Wild Plants of China
7:30 p.m., Monday, Sept. 24, 2007
Webster Hall Auditorium
Admission: free

This lecture will give a concise description of the Flora of China Project, an international collaboration between Chinese and non-Chinese botanists to catalog the estimated 31,000 species of wild plants in China. The project began in 1988 and now has a 21-member editorial committee and 11 partner institutions: four in China and seven in the West, coordinated by the Missouri Botanical Garden and the Institute of Botany, Beijing. The Flora itself is being written in English by more than 450 authors and will comprise 24 volumes of text and 24 accompanying volumes of illustrations, plus one introductory volume. Due for completion in 2012, so far 13 volumes of text and 11 volumes of illustrations have been published, accounting for more than 16,000 species.

Nick Turland is an associate curator in the research division of the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis. He joined the staff there in 1997 to work on the Flora of China Project, moving from his native England where he had worked in the Botany Department of the Natural History Museum, London. Professor Turland is now co-director of the Flora of China Project, which is coordinated from St. Louis and involves 11 institutions in China, the United States, and Europe. He has traveled to China five times for fieldwork, workshops, and Flora of China editorial meetings, and is due to go there again in August 2007. Professor Turland is also a specialist in botanical nomenclature — the international rules for the scientific naming of plants — and is actively involved in the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature, which is revised at the International Botanical Congresses held every six years. Since 1984, Professor Turland has also had a deep interest in the flora of Greece, especially the South Aegean island of Crete, and has published several books and articles on that region.