The writing of Flora Zambesiaca was started in 1960 as a joint project involving the collaboration of the Governments of the Federation of Rhodesia (now Zambia and Zimbabwe), Nyasaland (now Malawi), Portugal and the United Kingdom, as well as the following institutions: Natural and History Museum, London; Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; Centro de Botânica, Junta de Investigações do Ultramar, Lisbon; Government Herbarium, Salisbury, Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Its main objective is the taxonomic study of native and naturalised plants of the Zambezi River basin, covering the territories of Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe and the Caprivi Strip. The work is published following a sequence of families based on the Bentham & Hooker system, either as parts or as whole volumes as and when they are ready. So far about 78% of the planned volumes have been published (14 volumes divided into 50 parts of which 38 are published) and when completed the Flora will treat an estimated 10,000 species.
Project aims:
This project intends to provide not only an easy way of searching the information within Flora Zambesiaca but also an identification tool. This web site allows you to search for a plant name across the whole Flora, which would otherwise entail looking up separate indexes. It also allows the creation of lists of: endemics, species from a particular division or country, species that match a particular habit and of species that occur at a specific altitude. As far as posible no changes have been made to the information existing in the original text and the information is presented in the same way as in the original. Likewise, no taxonomic changes or new information has been added. Kew Index to Taxonomic Literature provides a bibliography of more recent taxonomic accounts where they exist.
Targets and Timings:
The process of transforming the digitised FZ published volumes into a suitable format so that it could be accessed through this website took approximately 8 months. We will incorporate more volumes as they are published.
If you would like further information, please visit:
Digitisation Process - more information on the Flora Zambesiaca digitisation process.
Map of Flora Zambesiaca - map displaying the divisoins within each FZ country.
List of published families - information on each published family and a list of families included in this website.
Links:
Kew Books - information about the African Floras published at Kew publications at Kew
Data & Publications - access to all Kew Databases and Publications.
Science & Horticulture - further information on other scientific research ongoing at Kew Gardens.