Flora Zambesiaca

How to use eFloras

Quick Search

Use this form to search for accepted names and synonyms across the whole Flora by entering the whole or part of the name. The full Flora entries can be viewed by clicking a name in the returned list. Family names need to be entered in full.

Full Search

Use the Full Search page for more powerful searches on accepted names, to make a checklist or to identify a species.

Taxon Name

To carry out a quick search enter a scientific (Latin) plant name into the Taxon name entry box. You can enter a family or genus name on its own, or a genus and species epithet. Do not include authors. You do not need to use a wildcard to truncate a name, this is done automatically. Examples: Euphorbia, Eup (will return all names with genus starting Eup), Euphorbia memoralis, Euphorbia mem. This query on its own will retrieve all names in the FZ which match whether they are synonym or accepted names. Family names must be entered in full and these are validated against the families in the Flora.

FZ Country

By using the drop down list choose either a FZ country or a country and a division of FZ to retrieve all published species that occur in that given area.

Endemic

The endemics query retrieves all those species that are endemics to the FZ area according to the information in the Flora (they are not country endemics but FZ area endemics). To get to this list of species endemic to the FZ, all those species with distribution outside FZ were first excluded. Then those records that had the following expressions in the ecology paragraph were marked as endemics: *endemic*, Known only*, Only known from*, Restricted to*, Not known*, Confined to*, Known so far only*, Unknown elsewhere*, Unknown outside* and So far known only*. Next records with the following expression were coded as non-endemics: Widespread*, Widely distributed*, *cultivated*, Widely spread*, Tropical*, Throughout tropical*, *weed*, *cosmopolitan* and *pantropical*. Finally those records that were not coded were checked manually for endemism. Those taxa with no given level of endemism but that had infraspecific taxa were treated as FZ endemics only when all their infraspecific taxa were endemics. If a taxa had neither endemism information nor a distribution outside FZ, it was treated as endemic.

Habit

Select a habit from the habit list to retrieve species coded for that particular habit. The information for habit was taken from the description of each species. First queries were performed on descriptions that contained the following words: tree, shrub, herb and climber. Next species that contained arborescent or arbores* were coded as tree. Those descriptions with bush, suffrutex or suffrut* were coded as shrub. Perennial, annual and biennial species, which were not described using any of the previous descriptors were treated as herbs. Species described as liane, liana, climb*, twiner or twin* and scrambler or scrambl* were treated as climbers. Finally, taxa for which habit was given in a superior taxon were manually coded as well as those species not coded but known to be a grass, fern or bulb (these were coded as herbs). The unspecified box will retrieve all those species that have not yet been coded.

Altitude

You can retrieve a list of species that occur in a particular altitude or altitude range by specifying whether the species occurs:

• below (use first altitude box)
• above (use first altitude box)
• plus or minus 10% (use first altitude box). This retrieves all species that occur in the range 10% plus or minus away from the input value. Entering 100 will return species within range 90 to 110 metres.
• plus or minus 20% (use first altitude box). Similar to the previous query.
• between, lower altitude in first box, higher altitude in second box.

All the altitudinal values were taken from the ecology paragraph in the Flora and are given in metres (m.). The altitude was divided into two fields: low and high altitudes. When only one value was given (e.g. species occurs at 1000 m), the value was repeated onto both low and high altitudes. Expressions such as 'from x altitude' were given in the Flora, the highest altitude in Africa was set as a top value (5895 m.). On the other hand, 0 m. was given to the bottom altitude in expression such as 'up to x altitude'. Key words such as: coastal or sea-level were set to a range between 0-100 m. (unless a high altitude value was stated); low or lowland were set to a range between 0-800 m.; medium altitude species from 500-1500 m. and finally high altitude species from 1500-5895 m.

Browse Taxa

To navigate through the genera of a particular family expand the genera list by clicking on the plus sign, similarly to navigate through the species of a particular genus. To look at the taxon information click on the name link. Links to the keys for a particular taxon are also available. Only family, genera, species and infraspecific level taxa are included in the browse facility.

Keys

All keys included in Flora Zambesica are available through links that connect one key to the next one. If the route stops at the genus level, this does not mean that there are not species accounts in Flora Zambesiaca for that particular genus, but it means that there is no key available. To access the information about those species either go to the Browse Taxa facility or perform a Quick Search.