About the World Flora Online project

Exploring the Earth’s plant diversity is a highly topical research field with countless new discoveries. Building upon the ground-breaking work of Carl L. Willdenow, Adolf Engler and Ignatz Urban as well as long-standing international partnerships, the Botanic Garden Berlin holds a crucial position in the global network of botanical institutions.

Our research is to a large extent based on our scientific plant collections. Taxonomic research, through which plants are identified, described, named and classified, is a central element of our daily work. Furthermore, we study the phylogenesis of plants and the mechanisms of their evolution. We focus our research on the following model groups of flowering plants and microorganisms: Asterales, Caryophyllales and Diatoms.

Besides this, our research activities are focused on particular regions of the world, where we carry out inventories and investigations of plant diversity together with our local partners. The results of our activities include contributions to Floras, identification guides (including genetic ​‘Barcodes’) and concepts for the conservation and sustainable use of plant diversity. Our focal regions are: Europe and Mediterranean area including the Caucasus and Cuba and the Caribbean region.

It is essential to link information about organisms and specimens in the collections, to secure this data sustainably and to make widely accessible and usable. This is the main task of Biodiversity Informatics. To develop efficient software solutions and services that help to process knowledge on biodiversity in a ​“taxonomically intelligent” way is one of the major tasks of this research and development group. Thereby, we make our collections accessible and work together with our international partners in order to make information on biodiversity available to everyone.

Find out more about :

Dahlem Centre of Plant Science — http://​www​.dcps​.fu​-berlin​.de/

Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin — https://​www​.bgbm​.org/