Snapshots of the taxonomy

The WFO Plant List is the most comprehensive and authoritative list of the world’s plants, maintained by the global community of taxonomic experts as a free and open-access resource​.It latest version is a citable static list of all known plant species generated (normally twice a year) from the dynamic Taxonomic Backbone of the World Flora Online (WFO). WFO aims to be comprehensive for species of vascular plants (flowering plants, conifers, ferns and their allies) and bryophytes (mosses and liverworts).

The WFO Plant List provides the accepted Latin name for species, with links to all synonyms by which that species has been known. A name marked as unplaced is not in the classification. There can be a number of reasons. It may be awaiting assessment by taxonomic experts, or there may be a conflict in opinions that has not yet been resolved. In some cases a names cannot be resolved due to insufficient evidence (e.g. poor description and no voucher specimen or illustration) and therefore cannot be placed in the classification. Deprecated records are names that are in our database, but should not be used. 

Versioned updates of the WFO Plant List will be produced, with the old versions archived. The latest version is shown on this homepage, but users can also step back in time to see how plant names were handled in earlier versions. 

Further information on the WFO Plant List, and its precursor The Plant List.