World Flora Online (WFO), a successor of The Plant List

The Plant List (TPL) was a working list of all known plant species produced by the botanical community in response to Target 1 of the 2002-2010 Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC). TPL has been static since 2013, but was used as the starting point for the Taxonomic Backbone of the World Flora Online (WFO), and updated information can be found at www.worldfloraonline.org.
             WFO is being developed by a consortium of leading botanical institutions worldwide in response to the 2011-2020 GSPC’s updated Target 1: to achieve an online Flora of all known plants by 2020. WFO welcomes feedback from users for improvements to its Taxonomic Backbone which is curated by a growing community of WFO Taxonomic Expert Networks (TENs).

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I looked at one page and found good result including descriptions, habitat and distribution from three different sources at one place as below: http://www.worldfloraonline.org/taxon/wfo-0000389564 Home page is www.worldfloraonline.org It is good
I looked at one page and found good result including descriptions, habitat and distribution from three different sources at one place as below:
It is good that information is being getting more and more refined.

Yes …, I have switched to this database a few months back. It seems well streamlines with no name duplications, no multiple accepted names and fortunately no unresolved names. We are back to old well trusted Kew database. 

…, Plants of the World Onlone (http://www.plantsoftheworldonline.org/??) is another good  database developed by Kew Botanical Garden. It enlists mist of Indian plants.

Kew has lot of free ideas. When a new boss comes, he or she wants to do something new, discarding the old one.

They have literally stopped The Plant List. Soon they may stop the website too. The Kew Checklist on the other hand is still working as it is handled by R. Govaerts.
So till the new director comes and gives another new idea? We are bound to use Plants of the World.
good to know. I will try to look up both, … links but I like … choice and idea and use … link. on a personal note though, i think botanists have the luxury of such personal whims by bosses of one or two gardens. cancer scientists on the other hand did not. their classification could not be on a  i.e. ONE boss’s idea. whim had no place, though i have witnessed some strong egos among caner guys but a consensus was always reached before end of the workshop days or patients would die because protocols were developed on a proper diagnosis and classification scheme.

i realize that to be fair to the botanists, we must/i must acknowledge that plants hybridize and evolve at a far greater rate and every gardener or breeder of plants names a plant at his or her desire. still there has to be a mechanism to reach consensus. i am still a student and love it 

I guess PoW is good.
Sorry friends, I meant I have started using http://www.plantsoftheworldonline.org/, maintained by KEW and find it very useful. 1,118,000 global plant names, 89,800 detailed descriptions, and 192,300 images. http://www.worldfloraonline.org/ seems to have more names. 1,324,109 names, 55,272 images, identification keys, 129,400 descriptions, 31,676 distributions and 1,153,608 references. It is 
I will check it for some days to find which is more robust and reliable.
I am Not saying that different bosses follow different taxonomy. They all eventually have to follow the same. But every new boss wants the world to be remember him by his contribution. They could have built it up on the kew checklist but they didn’t. Obviously they have their own database. 

Frankly, most of these bosses are not even taxonomists.

So when I study I look at their way and then I make my own way. Looking at their websites saves a lot of my time.

It is also obvious that the mistakes have been carried over from one website to other as their main database is same and the people working on both sites are almost the same.

Rightly said … though I am not a botanist. I also follow PoW now a days.
PoW looks more updated to me. Many of the Eriocaulon names are missing from WFO but available on PoW.
I was not knowing about this. Thank you. I will certainly try. At present I am consulting POWO for initial nomenclature.
Earlier it was grin, which has almost gone now. Than came ITIS and The Plant List, a good attempt to start with. These are almost replaced by WCSP, Catalogue of Life, Plants of the world online, now WFO etc. 

It is good to see competition. And it is always better to consult a few of them rather than depending on one. And finally choose one that you feel is it better for a particular species, genus or family depending upon from where the underlying data is coming from. 
I just noticed one strange thing from WFO.

THERE IS NO PARTICIPATING MEMBER FROM INDIA. AMAZZINGGGGG….. AND NO INDIAN BOTANIC GARDENS OR BSI.
I am so fed up of this European culture. They all will bring their own friends into the loop and create something repetitive.
OK, just for the sake of checking I thought of looking into this and randomly first genus to check came into my mind was Gastrochilus. So I searched for it and it is missing. So I searched for Geodorum. I appears. Now WFO says 12 species ; KEW CHECKLIST says 7 species; PLANT LIST says 12 species.
I pick up the top name that is, Geodorum appendiculatum. I find much more information still on the Plant List and Kew Checklist than on WFO. WFO doesnt even give full author citations. ITS A SHAME. 
No one in the world will cite a species name like this, “Geodorum appendiculatum Griff. Calcutta J. Nat. Hist.”
On the bibliography it gives a link which doesn’t work.
I understand, I am too fussy, and may be by 2020 they will bring it to higher standards. But right now, in the current state, I don’t recommend anyone to use WFO.
I see one plus point that there is an option for people to join and so I highly recommends experts like … and … to join this. I am sure I am skipping names of many other experts. It would give us an upper hand to correct the taxonomy of things if and when needed.
Rightly Said, …  It appears, they have just started the work and it may take some time to move away from static data of 2013 of The Plant List. 

As far as BSI is concerned, I am not aware if they have joined any of the global initiatives, which we have discussed so far. 
However, their data is being utilized by Catalogue of Life and Kew. 

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