Inventory of the Plants of Pakistan

和同事们一起。巴基斯坦卡拉奇大学的Peter Hoch博士正在领导一个分类学家小组完成巴基斯坦植物区系项目的科级分类处理，该项目完成后将涵盖约6000种开花植物。这笔赠款将为巴基斯坦剩余的最后四个科，百合科（百合）、剑齿苋科（金鱼龙科）、蔷薇科（玫瑰科）和菊科（向日葵科）提供治疗，估计有900种。研究将综合过去几十年来收集的数千个植物标本馆标本的形态特征和地理分布记录，包括欧洲探险家收集的具有历史意义的早期标本，这些标本存放在欧洲植物标本馆。《巴基斯坦植物区系》印刷版现在有200多册，涵盖数千种。随着印刷卷的完成，密苏里植物园正在托管一个网站，其中包含最新分类处理的网络可访问版本，并将所有以前出版的卷合并为网络可访问格式，并通过美国农业部提供补充资金。植物区系信息为该地区的生态研究提供了基本的植物分布信息，对研究盐碱化和沙漠化以及追踪美洲入侵物种的起源尤其重要。完整的植物区系将为中亚地区具有重要生物地理意义的大部分地区提供权威的分类信息。

With colleagues Drs. Ali and Qaiser of the University of Karachi, Pakistan, Dr. Peter Hoch is leading a small team of taxonomists in completing the family-level taxonomic treatments for the Flora of Pakistan project, which will cover about 6000 species of flowering plants when finished. This grant will provide treatments for the last four remaining families, the Liliaceae (lilies), Scrophulariaceae (snapdragon family), Rosaceae (rose family), and Asteraceae (sunflower family) with an estimated 900 species in Pakistan. Research will synthesize morphological features and geographical distribution records from thousands of herbarium specimens collected over previous decades, including historically important early collections made by European explorers and housed in European herbaria. The printed flora of Pakistan is now available in over 200 volumes, covering thousands of species. Along with the completion of the printed volumes, the Missouri Botanical Garden is hosting a website with web-accessible versions of the latest taxonomic treatments and is incorporating all the previously published volumes into web-accessible formats, with complementary funding through the USDA. The floristic information provides basic plant distributional information underlying ecological studies in the region, especially important for studies of salinization and desertification, and for tracking the origins of what are now invasive species in the Americas. The completed flora will provide authoritative taxonomic information for a large, biogeographically significant portion of central Asia.