Flora Europaea

De Redactie van de Flora Europaea zond ons over deze flora de volgende uiteenzetting, die voorkorat in The Times van 2 nov. 1957- Wij hrengen dit artikel gaarne onder de aandacht van de lezerss "Botany affects man's interests at so many points that much more than purely scientific interest attaches to a vast Botanical project that is now getting actively under way. This is the publication of a flora of Europe, to contain descriptions – usually of not more than 50 words each – of all the flowering plants and ferns that grow spontaneously in the continent. It had at first been intended not to include European Russia (since it was covered by the new flora of the U.S.S.R.), but it has now been decided to do so, and the decision is clearly right, even though it will mean adding about 1,500 species to the book – which may now be expected to include some 16,000 or 17?000 kinds of plant. This will be not only a new and up-to-date work but, in effect, one of a new sort – the first modern flora of any whole continent (not merely of Europe) ever to be published ~ though there are in course of production several floras on a wide regional basis, as of Malaysia, or eastern or western tropical Africa." "In the past, the listing and describing of wild plants has nearly always been upon an basis of political geography. The floras, whore they have appeared, have usually been national floras – with only occasional attempts to cover wider, more natural, geographical areas. Europe is a continent of many, and often changing, national frontiers, and anyone who wishes to study a particular European plant might have to consult up to 100 hooks (apart from countless periodicals) written in many different languages (such a collection indeed, as scarcely exists outside a very few of the richest European scientific libraries) even to discover so elementary a fact as in what European countries the plant grows. There is, moreover, the consideration that there exist no adequate hooks on the plants of several of these countries."