http://plantsoftheworldonline.org/ : 27 posts by 7 authors.
POWO now contains all Vascular plant families and is now 97.8% complete for species names. 
Worth trying by entering a search. Appears to be better than the Plant List. 

Thanks …  This is really a wonderful resource for taxonomists..


great. this is then the avatar Kew has been talking about. site says its initial focus is on tropical Africa


However, a mere compilation only. Accepted names and synonyms need not be taken for granted.

Some improvements such as images and references can be noticed.


I did not find it of much use to me. If distribution is any state in India, I think it shows whole of India in the map. 

its saying its started with tropical africa only. it may take them a while to fine tune all regions. as of now its tropical africa nly

NO images in the site ??

Sometimes I find a few illustrations. 

I am not able to see the diversity of the family, i.e. how many genera and how many species? Is it available in the site?

I think although numbers are not provided, one can see the genera under a family and species under a genus, by searching on it. 

this site gives you the whole thing at your fingertips. i think i am going to love it and so will new people and old people who can look up the salient points to photograph i think, i may be wrong but thats what i think just yet.
steps: 

1: go to the site by clicking on the link … gave you get a one line query area

2: type family, enter by pressing the magnifying lens, you get a screen with some random species but on the right upper side there is a white window with a button that says Family and hax a X next to it
3: press that x as if trying to get rid of it. next screen you get is all families  starting with Acanthaceae, there are 560 results in 24 pages
4: move your cursor to acanthaceae. a blue frame develops around it
5: move your arrow /cursor to acanthaceae and press left click once on your mouse
6: next screen comes up with descriptions,  images, accepted genera, synonyms. other data etc. i got 201accepted genera for this. scroll down to find some more data.
OR 
I punched on Hypoestes. got description. some salient features photos. distribution in world. accepted species. i randomly picked hypoestes lanata. and got to see the four herbarium specimen pictures they have in their database.
i went back to acanthaceae. picked justicia. then j adhatoda and got to see the painting commissioned by  william Roxburgh and several herbarium digitized and some references. 
see if you like it. can be fun and informative. tell me how you did with my steps.
ps remember this is just related to african flora yet

Thank you …  Much improved than its precursors but the nomenclature issue is based on literature only.

Very interesting! did you try my steps?

Yes. This website is far better than the others, keeping aside IPNI which is the replacement of Index Kewensis.

i am glad for your positive feedback

Yes … I have tried and reached to same conclusion. The number of genera (given as accepted genera) is available on the page of family but total number of species in a family is the problem. One has to total all accepted species in all genera of a family to reach this number which is difficult in larger families. The Plant List was more convenient for such data and I am accustomed to it. Familiarity with POWO will take a little time.

One more thing- now they have images with names; the power of images for identification is realized.


point well taken. the plant list is still active. the new site is just africa related. not world wide. so has its limitations but i liked access to old pairings and herbaria. in addition to some examples of photographs-
i dont think the plant list site disappear. we could peruse both. cant we?


Now I am using too.

But not many images for comparing.


but id is not just comparing images. its the taxonomic keys. dissection of flowers, leaves, veins, habit etc

==
and its a new site, give them time. 8 years ago if someone expected our forum to be everything it is now, could we have met  their needs for photos? and we are still evolving


I shall leave this for expert. However, sometimes helpful to अनाडि like me.

ha ha. count me in your अनाडि dal

POWO shows distribution of species on Maps, which can be very misleading for India.
Just to give an example, Dicliptera nasikensis is distributed in Nasik district of Maharashtra only as per Catalogue of Life and Flora of Peninsular India.
However, if you see it in POWO, its map will show as if it is distributed all over India except for Assam and Himalayas. On clicking Full Distribution Listing under it, it says Native to India. 
As per my experience with it, it has divided India into four regions- India, Assam, West Himalaya and East Himalaya.
So it is found in Nasik or Maharashtra only, it will show the area as shown at POWO and similarly for other three regions.
So beware- don’t think it is distributed all over India and be careful.

That is the case with Nepal also. Many species recorded in Nepal is not reflected in the distribution map.


I am not able to understand why POWO does not include all synonyms as mentioned in the most reliable KEW database so far i.e. WCSP.
Although these are properly captured in Catalogue of Life, whenever it sources its data from WCSP.
Does anybody have any clue ?


I am also with the same opinion about the POWO. In most cases it is very helpful but in some cases it is clueless.

It does not include most of the subsp. and var. species and distribution. And, in some cases 
syn. are mentioned as the accepted name which are not in other links!


Can anybody offer any clues as both come from KEW itself ?


May be due to the vastness of the data set they can’t function simultaneously, and both seems independent in functioning. 


I think the reason is their history, source and approach.
POWO was launched only in 2017 with a focus on key tropical African Floras – Flora Zambesiaca, Flora of West Tropical Africa and Flora of Tropical East Africa specificallyIn addition, a key function of POWO is to ensure that Kew’s floristic data can be harvested and incorporated by the World Flora Online (WFO) portal.
WCSP, on the other hand has been working since 1994, has now become an international collaborative programme with more than 150 contributors from 22 countries.
KEW also hosts Catalogue of Life largely based on this Collaborative Approach, includes all organisms and not only Plants as in above two. 

I fully agree with … In case of any correction/modification required in POWO, please write to Dr. Rafael Govaerts with a document (such as publication) and he will take care of it. However, there may be slight delay at present because the Kew staff are working only 3 days a week. IPNI also taking longer time to update data. Linking IPNI with POWO is also a big task.

Anyway, one may request Dr. Kanchi Gandhi at Harvard for any update in IPNI.


Thanks, … I could not follow KEW also hosts Catalogue of Life largely based on this Collaborative Approach, includes all organisms and not only Plants as in above two”


Information in Catalogue of Life for Seed Plants is largely based on Kew Database, with addition sources also incorporated. May be use of KEW also hosts is in error by me

Thanks, … Yes, Catalogue of relies on WCSP, for many but I think not all families, it has.


POWO is relatively new. Unlike people and websites who like to copy paste things, POWO when started, had been running short of workforce and then corvid happened. Hence it has been lagging behind. Hence POWO is not complete yet.


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