Organisation of information

The Red List is arranged by major taxon: fern allies, true ferns, gymnosperms (gnetophytes, conifers, Ginkgo, and cycads), and angiosperms (dicotyledons and monocotyledons), (see Table 1). Within each of these major taxa, families are listed alphabetically, and genera and species are listed alphabetically within their families. Following the taxonomic data list is a comprehensive listing of all relevant data sources, arranged numerically, and finally an index to the genera, families and major taxa is included. Within the Red List statistics are provided on the number of genera, species and threatened taxa for each family.

This list is a global catalogue of those vascular plant taxa that have been assessed in some degree, and that meet the IUCN criteria as globally threatened or extinct. Interpretation of the list and summary tables requires an understanding of the process involved in drawing up the list, an appreciation of how comprehensive the data may or may not be (especially where the gaps occur), and knowledge of how the data are managed. Each of these topics is taken up below.

Names

Managing the taxonomy of a global dataset at the species and infraspecific level, with data provided from diverse sources over a period of more than two decades, presents many problems. The aim in managing the Threatened Plants database has been to maintain a reasonably coherent taxonomy, sufficiently accurate for the purposes of plant conservation, within existing funding and time constraints rather than a totally rigorous taxonomic check list. This lack of complete taxonomic and nomenclatural rigour will, undoubtedly, upset some readers and it will result in some taxa either not being listed under their correct name, or listed under more than one name. Ensuring input from the relevant taxonomic experts is a major part of the work involved in managing the data and further advice on taxonomy is always welcomed.

Where available, regional floras (particularly Flora Europaea, Flora Mesoamericana and Flora Neotropica) have been followed in preference to national floras. All plant name records imported electronically from TNC, Wildlife Australia, NBI and Flora Europaea were treated as taxonomically accepted (see Appendix II, Taxon Information).

Despite the clear preference for following these regional authorities, plant names have of necessity been incorporated from an extensive range of sources, all of which are listed in the Data Sources section following the main list. The data source(s) provided after each name is the source from which the particular plant name was first recorded in the database. No attempt has been made to list the original publication of the name.

Although the database allows users to track multiple common names (vernacular names, trade names, timber names, etc.) in different languages, these common names have been excluded from this list due to lack of space.

Genera and families follow Vascular Plant Families and Genera (Brummitt, 1992).

Synonyms

Records considered to be synonyms are linked to the accepted name in the database, and have been suppressed from this list. Inevitably, some names not yet recorded on the database as synonyms will have been included in this list, so a taxon may, unfortunately, be included under more than one name.

Authors

Authors of plant names - at both the species and intraspecific level - have been incorporated according to the source from which the name was obtained. Where possible and time permitting, authors names have been standardised according to Brummitt & Powell (1992). Please note, however, that due to limitations of time and staff resources, an author may well be cited in disparate ways throughout this list, and some authors are missing.

Species vs. infraspecies

Plant names are recorded at the taxonomic level at which they are provided to WCMC, with data on subspecies or varieties held in addition to information at the species level. For example, Wendlandiella gracilis Dammer, W. gracilis Dammer var. gracilis, W. gracilis Dammer var. polyclada, (Burret) Henderson and W. gracilis Dammer var. simplicifrons (Burret) Henderson are all to be found on this list, as some information has come at the species level and other information at the infraspecific level. This of necessity complicates the list and occasionally results in inconsistent data sets, but we felt it best to present the data in a way that most closely represented the information provided to us. The counts in this Red List are for species (see Species Counts, Pg. xviii).

Although this book only covers vascular plants, much work has been undertaken on non-vascular plants and fungi. All relevant data on nonvascular plants and on fungi available to WCMC have been incorporated into the Threatened Plants database but omitted from this publication. There is a clear need to include global listings for these groups in future Red Lists.

Conservation Status

Data on conservation status are presented in this list following the original IUCN threat categories. (Appendix I; Threatened Plants Committee Secretariat, 1981). These categories have been widely applied to thousands of taxa of plants and animals, referring to the conservation status of an organism in the wild.

The current list, using the original IUCN categories, is important as a baseline for future work, even as various groups of specialists are beginning to re-code plants using the new IUCN categories.

To make the categories more quantitative and consistent and to provide a mechanism for capturing the criteria used to assign conservation status ranks, IUCN adopted a new set of Red List categories, which are gradually being applied and which will be used in future listings. Details of the original and "new" 1994 IUCN Red List Categories are given in Appendix I.

Finally, please note that not all "endangered", "vulnerable" or "rare" categories are comparable. Given the huge variation in population dynamics, breeding strategies and life cycles exhibited by vascular plants - from a sedge to a monkey puzzle tree - this is not surprising, but it must not be ignored by those trying to make global comparisons based on the statistics and information provided in this list.

Sources of conservation status data

Data are presented in this list for both local (national and subnational) and global status. Data on national conservation status have been provided by a wide range of organisations and individuals throughout the world, with data sets relating to either a geographical area or a taxonomic group. Major sources have been national Red Data books or lists that have been produced by countries throughout the world. Data have also been provided by SSC Specialist Groups. In addition, a great deal of information has been supplied by individual botanists and conservationists. Often these workers have provided updated information or completely new information about taxa of conservation concern, and we hope to bring them into the SSC network.

A major portion of the list comes from electronic data sets from The Nature Conservancy (TNC), Wildlife Australia, National Botanical Institute (NBI), and Flora Europaea. This list therefore represents a mixture of various 'official' status reports as well as individual opinion; by referring to the data source it is possible to determine the source of virtually all data in this list.

WCMC's role is essentially one of compiling the outputs of these distributed data sets, and assigning global threat categories based on the collective local threat status information. WCMC makes no value judgement during the process, other than validating, as far as possible, the source of the supplied national threat status data.

Interpreting threat status

In many cases, national/subnational threat status is given in published national Red Data books or lists, with threat status given according to IUCN categories. Where different schemes have been followed, every effort has been made by WCMC to assign the appropriate IUCN threat category based on the definitions given by the data providers (see Appendix III). Where electronic data sets are concerned, detailed discussions have been held prior to the data being merged into the global database. Although the constraints of space in this volume prevent the display of these "non-IUCN" threat categories, they are maintained in the database.

Interpreting and assigning the global threat status

The global threat status recorded for each taxon in the Threatened Plants database is assigned at WCMC on the basis of the combined national/subnational data. For a taxon to be listed as globally threatened, information is needed on the local threat status throughout its natural range. Global threat status is assigned only once the full distribution for the taxon in question is known. A "lowest common denominator" approach is followed meaning, for example, that a species listed as Rare within part of its range but Endangered throughout the rest of its range, will be listed as Rare globally. A species listed as Endangered globally will be either Endangered or Extinct throughout its range, and so on.

Many taxa have had to be omitted from this Red List due to insufficient information on distribution and/or status, despite being listed as threatened at the national level in one or more countries. These records are available in the Threatened Plants database, and it is hoped to publish these data, representing information for over 14,000 more taxa , in the future.

Exceptions to assigning the global threat status

In some instances data provided to WCMC have given global rather than, or in addition to, national/subnational threat status. This is particularly true for large data sets that have been provided electronically, notably from The Nature Conservancy (data sources 20850 and 20883) and Wildlife Australia (data source 20681). If global but not local threat status has been provided, a local rank of Indeterminate has been assigned by WCMC.

CITES listing

The Threatened Plants database includes data concerning all taxa listed on CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora) Appendices I and II current as of the ninth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to CITES (WCMC, 1996). Two species, Orothamus zeyheri and Protea odorata have been proposed for downlisting from Appendix I to Appendix II at the 1997 tenth Conference of the Parties. CITES listing is at the level of species, genus or family, and records on the database are flagged at the appropriate taxonomic level. They are displayed in this list as indicated in the following table.

Family I or II (underlined)

Genus I or II (italicised

Species or infraspecies I or II (normal type)

Note that not all taxa within genera and families that have blanket listings under CITES are shown in this list. Only those taxa that have been assessed and found to be threatened throughout their range are included.

Distribution

Distribution information is recorded following the standard of Biological Recording Unit (BRU) (Hollis & Brummitt, 1992), endorsed as an international data standard by the Taxonomic Database Working Group. This standard provides a four-tier hierarchical scheme, with larger countries and larger islands subdivided into geopolitical areas. The 238 countries currently recognised by ISO (ISO, 1993) are divided into 1004 BRUs (see Table 3).

Table 3 BRUs (Biological Recording Units) ¹

Data are recorded at the finest scale possible within the BRU scheme. For example, if data are provided on the threat status of a plant within individual states of Mexico, then this is the scale at which the data are recorded in the database. However, if data are only provided for a particular plant in Mexico as a whole, then the data can only be recorded in the database at the national level. This unavoidably leads to some inconsistencies and data sets that are not directly comparable, but as discussed under 'Species vs. infraspecies' above , we feel that it is important to present the data with the most detail possible, even if it occasionally results in a lack of total comparability.

Since BRUs are geopolitically based, they do not cross national boundaries. All BRU units are linked to the appropriate ISO country code, allowing country-level queries to be made even though the data are often stored at a lower level. Some modifications have been made at WCMC to the BRU scheme to take political changes since the standard was published into account.

There is also a free-text "geographic qualifier" available in the database, which shows in this list as bracketed information following the name of the BRU. This qualifier provides additional information about the distribution of the taxon within the BRU - for example, a mountain range. Please note that this information is in many cases not comprehensive, and is not always from the BRU data source listed.

Data sources

A critically important feature of the Threatened Plants database is the linkage maintained between many data fields and their data sources. Considerable effort is made to ensure that the source of plant names, distribution and conservation status is tracked, ensuring that credit is given to the primary sources of data and that users can judge the validity of the data provided. A complete list of all the data sources used in the production of this Red List is included following the main list. Here over 2,000 of the 19,067 records in the data source file are listed, approximately 10,000 of which were published in the World Plant Conservation Bibliography (Anon., 1990).

The list of Data Sources demonstrates the wide variety of sources of information drawn upon by WCMC in the development of the Threatened Plants database. These include official Red Data Books, published floras and monographs, journal articles, electronic lists, annotations made by specialists to WCMC printouts, and personal communications. Please note that some of the information in this list dates from data sources that are 10-15 years old. Updates to these particular records are clearly desirable. The database is designed so that more than one data source can be stored, thus allowing users to track multiple and/or conflicting data. In this publication multiple name data sources are shown. As compilers we have needed to track only one conservation status as the primary -or current - view, and have displayed the data that seem most appropriate.

The current practice while entering data into the database is to require the relevant data source number for all new plant names, distribution or threat data. However, prior to the 1990 adoption of BG-BASE, the practice was slightly different, and not all of these fields were mandatory in the earlier database. Although efforts have been made to fill in missing fields during the preparation of this list, time and resources have not permitted all missing data sources to be checked and updated from the original card index system.

Statistics

Summary statistics are given in the list at the beginning of each family. These comprise an estimate of the number of genera and species in the family. These figures are derived from numerous sources with Brummitt (1992) and Cronquist (1981) being the main sources. The figure for recorded threatened species is calculated from the data as explained in the analysis. Please note that species recorded as extinct are not included in this count.