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1 This article was downloaded by: [University of Reading] On: 10 June 2015, At: 08:45 Publisher: Taylor & Francis Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: Registered office: Mortimer House, Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Israel Journal of Plant Sciences Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: The future of floristics in the Mediterranean region VERNON HEYWOOD a a Centre for Plant Diversity and Systematics, School of Plant Sciences, The University of Reading, Reading RG6 6AS, UK Published online: 14 Mar To cite this article: VERNON HEYWOOD (2002) The future of floristics in the Mediterranean region, Israel Journal of Plant Sciences, 50:sup1, 5-13 To link to this article: PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the Content ) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

2 Israel Journal of Plant Sciences Vol pp. S-5 S-13 The future of floristics in the Mediterranean region VERNON HEYWOOD Centre for Plant Diversity and Systematics, School of Plant Sciences, The University of Reading, Reading RG6 6AS, UK (Received 1 September 2002) ABSTRACT Downloaded by [University of Reading] at 08:45 10 June 2015 In this paper, I address both the wider issues that affect floristic studies today and how they are likely to develop in the future, and the special problems that concern the Mediterranean region in particular. A survey of published floristic studies is given for the Mediterranean and the Middle East, and the desirability of applying electronic web-based preparation and publication of floristic and taxonomic projects is considered, with special reference to the Euro + Med PlantBase project. A new paradigm for taxonomy, and a plan of action for Mediterranean floristic studies are proposed. INTRODUCTION International interest in taxonomy for example, through the Global Taxonomy Initiative of the Convention on Biological Diversity is largely focused on the problems of completing the inventory of plants as far as possible, in the face of increasing threats to their survival caused by habitat loss and other factors. Nevertheless, it is the spectacular achievements of molecular systematics in suggesting realignments in the relationships between and within the families of flowering plants that tend to steal the headlines. Such dichotomies of interest have characterized taxonomy and systematics since their scientific beginnings and should not divert us from pursuing the legitimate aims of each, so long as we do so in the most effective way possible. The Mediterranean region is not a geographical unity (Quézel, 1985), and is a difficult area to define since it does not coincide with any political delimitation. It is made up of a number of territories that surround an almost enclosed sea but only some parts of the countries bordering it, such as Spain, France, even Egypt, can be considered Mediterranean in a true sense, while others, such as Portugal that does not even have a Mediterranean coastline, are regarded floristically as largely Mediterranean. The political Mediterranean does not, therefore, coincide with the bioclimatic, biogeographical, or floristic Mediterranean. Moreover, the Mediterranean overlaps, to a considerable degree, the regions commonly referred to as the Middle or Near East and Southwest Asia. In this paper, the Mediterranean region refers to the countries covered by Med-Checklist (Greuter et al., 1984). It is not surprising, therefore, that it is difficult to give an accurate estimate of the number of species of flowering plants and ferns that occur in the Mediterranean region, however defined. The figure for Mediterranean flora is frequently considered to be of the order of approximately 24 25,000 species (Quézel, 1985; Heywood, 1995; Quézel and Medail, 1995) or approximately 29 30,500 taxa, including subspecies based on an extrapolation from the three published volumes of Med-Checklist (Greuter, 1991). This represents around 10 percent of the world flora. The problem is complicated by the fact that floristic knowledge of the region is far from uniform and is best considered under three areas the Mediterranean zones of the European countries, the North African v.h.heywood@reading.ac.uk 2002 Laser Pages Publishing Ltd., Jerusalem

3 S-6 Mediterranean zones, and the Mediterranean zones of the East Mediterranean/Levant each of which has had a separate history of floristic investigation and taxonomic study. The importance of the Mediterranean region from a botanical point of view scarcely needs stressing. I summarized the key features in a previous paper (Heywood, 1998): 1. The Mediterranean region is one of the world s major centers of plant diversity, containing 11 of the 231 centers selected for their global importance (Davis et al., 1994) and one of the world s 25 biodiversity hot spots according to recent studies (Mittermeier et al., 1999; Myers et al., 2000). 2. The region is one of the centers of diversity for crop plants (Harlan, 1995). 3. Many crop relatives occur in the Mediterranean basin (Zohary and Hopf, 1993, 2000; Heywood and Zohary, 1995). 4. The region covers some 2.3 million km 2, some 1.6% of the land surface, yet contains about 10% of the world s flowering plants (Quézel, 1985; Quézel and Medail, 1995; Greuter, 1991: Heywood, 1991, 1995). 5. The flora of the Mediterranean region is floristically rich in comparison with adjacent temperate and desert regions. As a whole it comprises approximately 24 25,000 species (or approximately 29 30,500 taxa including subspecies) (Quézel, 1985; Greuter, 1991; Heywood, 1995). 6. High numbers of species are found in unit areas. Thus, Naveh and Whittaker (1977) report having found sites in Mediterranean Israel that have as many species per 0.1 ha sample plots as have been found for woody species in sample areas in Ecuador. Likewise, Greuter (1991) found after plotting taxon numbers against area sizes, that the flora of the Mediterranean region as a whole is about twice as large as would be expected, even though deserts make up half of its total surface area without adding significantly to floristic diversity. 7. The high degree of local endemism. It has been estimated (Quézel, 1985) that about 50% of the flora is endemic to the region, while Greuter (1991), in his analysis of the flora based on the published volumes of Med-Checklist, gives an extrapolated figure of nearly 37.5% considered to be locally endemic (i.e., confined to a single area) and 63.5% endemic to the region covered by Med-Checklist (see below under floristic diversity). 8. The high degree of human interference and disturbance of the vegetation. This process dates back over Israel Journal of Plant Sciences ten thousand years, and has been responsible for the transformation of much of the native vegetation, leading to the formation of many secondary or subseral communities, such as the characteristic shrubland communities (maquis, phrygana, matorral, garigue, etc.) that form a conspicuous part of Mediterranean landscapes (di Castri, 1981). 9. The large number of exotic or invasive species that have become established in the region. In a reverse direction, many Mediterranean weeds are noxious weeds in other parts of the world (Heywood, 1989). FLORAS OF THE REGION The European Mediterranean The floristics of the European countries that border the Mediterranean France, Spain, Italy, Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey-in-Europe (and their islands) have been unevenly studied, with those in the west better known than those in the east (see Annex 1). Several of the individual territories still do not possess a complete or comprehensive modern Flora, although one of the most remarkable phenomena in the last years has been the resurgence of taxonomic activity in some countries such as Spain and Greece. Spain is exceptional in that in addition to the monumental Flora Iberica (Castroviejo et al., 1986) that is underway (9 out of a projected 21 volumes have appeared by May 2002), other major regional works include the Flora de Andalucia Occidental (Valdes et al., 1987) and Flora dels Paisos Catalans (Bolòs and Vigo, 1984), as well as many provincial Floras. Unfortunately, these different works do not employ the same classification or nomenclature for many of the species the same entity may occur variously as a species, a subspecies, a variety, or a synonym (cf. Tutin, Heywood et al., 1964, 1980, 1993), all of which cause problems of interpretation for the user. Greece is still the orphan of Mediterranean floristics: Although the Flora Hellenica project was started in 1991 to replace the outdated Conspectus Florae Graecae of Halacsy ( ), only two of the projected ten volumes have been published as of December 2000, although it was envisaged that they would appear at intervals of 18 to 24 months (Strid, 1991). North African Mediterranean In this region, contributions by French botanists have dominated the scene until recently. Maire s Flore de l Afrique du Nord, 16 volumes of which were published between 1952 and 1987, was

4 never completed and is considerably outdated. A number of other Floras, some complete, some unfinished, have been produced for individual countries of the region, such as Sauvage and Vindt s Flore du Maroc (Vol. 1, 1952, Vol. 2, 1954), Quézel and Santa s Nouvelle Flore de l Algérie (1962, 1963), the Flore analytique et synoptique de la Tunisie. Crytogammes vasculaires, gymnospermes et monocotyledons by Cuénod et al. (1954), and the Flore de la Tunisie: Angiospermes Dicotyledones ( ) by Pottier- Alapetite. A checklist of the Libyan flora has been initiated by Boulos ( ) but discontinued with the advent of the publication of the Flora of Libya by Ali, El-Gadi, and Jafri ( ), in 145 fascicles. A major recent development was the publication of the first volume of Flore Practique du Maroc 1. Pteridophyta, Gymnospermae, Angiospermae (Lauraceae-Neuradaceae) by Fennane et al. (1999), a team of mainly Moroccan botanists. Much floristic work still remains to be done and a comprehensive Flora of North Africa still remains a desideratum. In May 2002, a Regional Workshop for the Establishment of a North African Network for Taxonomy (NAFRINET) was held in Rabat, and it is hoped that this will facilitate, inter alia, further work on the taxonomy and floristics of the region. East Mediterranean/Levant/ Near East Region The flora of the Middle (Near) East region is diverse and, according to Boulos et al. (1994), comprises some 23,000 vascular plant species, of which 6,700 are endemic to the region. On the other hand, the flora of the Middle East is estimated at 15,000 species by Heller (1991). Figures for floristic richness and endemism are presented for individual countries in Table 1. These figures can be compared with 25,000 for the flora of the Mediterranean region (see above). In some countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus, Israel, and Turkey, modern Floras or inventories have been completed or nearly so, including such monumental works as Davis Flora of Turkey ( ), Rechinger s Flora Iranica (1963), and Zohary and Feinbrun-Dothan s Flora Palaestina ( ). In other countries, such as Iraq, Iran, and the Arabian Peninsula, they are still in the stage of development. A recent checklist of the flora of Egypt has been published (Boulos, 1995) and in the same year another catalogue of the flora was published by El Hadidi and Fayed (1995); and the first two volumes of a revision of Täckholm et al. s Flora of Egypt ( ) have been published by Boulos (1999, 2001). A series of fascicles containing accounts of small families or part of a larger family are being published as a continuation of S-7 Table 1 Floristic diversity in the countries of the Near East and South West Asia Country Vascular Endemic % Endemic plant species species species Bahrain Egypt Iran Iraq Israel Jordan Kuwait Lebanon Oman Qatar Saudi Arabia Sinai (Egypt) Syria Turkey United Arab Emirates Yemen Socotra (Yemen) Source: Boulos in Davis et al. (1994). Täckholm et al. s Flora in Taeckholmia by Cairo University; an additional series, consisting of six issues, covering 14 families, 87 genera, and 286 species was published between 1980 and 1998 (and see El Hadidi, 1997). The first volume of a multidisciplinary Flora Aegyptiaca that contains floristic treatments of 24 families (Equisetaceae Caryophyllaceae) has been published under the editorship of El Hadidi (2000). A new supplementary volume of Davis s monumental Flora of Turkey and the East Aegean Islands, Vol. 11, edited by Güner, Özhatay, Ekim, and K. Hüsnü Can Baser, has been published (2001). The first of seven projected volumes of the Flora of the Arabian Peninsula and Socotra was published in 1996 (Miller and Cope, 1996). This aims to provide a regional framework for the Floras of the countries of the Arabian Peninsula (Saudi Arabia, Republic of Yemen including the Socotran Archipelago, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait). Another major floristic work is the Conspectus florae orientalis (Zohary, Heyn, and Heller, and Heller and Heyn ; see Heller, 1991), an annotated catalogue of the flora of the Middle East. This synthetic catalogue is in some ways a supplement and update of the taxa listed in Boissier s classic Flora Orientalis that was completed over a century ago. Altogether, some 54 Standard Floras for the Heywood / The future of floristics in the Mediterranean region

5 S-8 countries or territories of the Mediterranean region have been published (Annex 1) in various languages (not including field guides and popular pictorial/illustrated Floras). PLAN OF ACTION Having set the scene, reviewed the basic facts, and considered the constraints, we must now consider what the prospects are for Mediterranean floristics in the context of the opportunities and technologies available today. But first, some general considerations that concern global taxonomy and systematics, not just the Mediterranean region. Floristics: Completing the inventory Floristics is the process of observing and collecting plant material in the field, processing it, storing it in herbaria, and using it as the primary basis for describing new taxa and preparing lists or Floras of particular areas. Today it is regarded as a basic requirement for knowledge (and cataloguing) of the plant biodiversity of an area. Various calls have been made to complete the inventory of all organisms, such as Mission 1 of Systematics Agenda 2000, which is to discover, describe, and inventory global species diversity, although just how far this goal is achievable is a matter of conjecture. A recent initiative in this respect is the All Species Inventory: A call for the discovery of all life-forms on Earth, supported by a number of leading scientists, with an explicit goal to catalog ALL living creatures within the time span of one human generation (twenty-five years). The importance of inventorying biodiversity and the need for sound taxonomic information has been recognized by the Convention on Biological Diversity s Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical, and Technological Advice (SBSTTA) since its first meeting in 1995 (Creswell and Bridgewater, 2000). Signatory governments to the CBD have subsequently acknowledged that there is a taxonomic impediment to the sound management of biodiversity. This impediment arises from the combination of inadequate taxonomic knowledge, the shortage of systematists, and the inadequacy of sampling, collections, human resources, and infrastructure. In order to remove this impediment or at least improve the situation, governments have proposed as a policy response a Global Taxonomy Initiative (GTI). Whether the actions needed to implement the GTI will ever receive anything like adequate financial support is an open question. The value of pursuing floristic studies today has been questioned by some biologists who consider that Israel Journal of Plant Sciences biodiversity inventory will produce data of uneven quality and undemonstrated utility for conservation purposes and further weaken systematics and other collection-based enquiry as scientific endeavors. In particular, they challenge the contention that biological inventories will make a significant contribution to solving the biodiversity crisis and suggest that lists of species have little intrinsic value and little relevance to the practical problems involved in the conservation of natural areas. On the other hand, as Pimm and Lawton (1998) remind us, if each biologist wishes to maintain a rich and interesting world to study, we cannot afford the luxury of ignoring those most basic of all biological skills taxonomy and the knowledge of which species lives where. The questioning of floristics and the value of cataloguing diversity before it disappears is symptomatic of the increasing dichotomy mentioned above: On the one hand, molecular systematics that is techniques-dominated, largely laboratory- and computer-based (although involving tedious procedures) and leads to exciting results that purport to show correct relationships (the actual tree of life), and on the other hand, field-, herbarium-, and library-based taxonomy that has changed little over the past 250 years. The basic methods of field survey and collection for taxonomic studies remain essentially unchanged (Heywood, 1996): While great advances have been made in the measurement and handling of taxonomic character information, the quality of field material collected and its documentation has improved little, although we are now much more aware of the need for adequate sampling of variation. This dichotomy between basic taxonomy and modern (and ever-changing) approaches has plagued the subject (and its practitioners) for much of the last century and is to a large extent misguided. Both are needed, as they serve different purposes. A problem for managers is devising reward systems that will recognize both, and persuading good students to take up a career that involves floristic work. As noted above, there are still major gaps in our knowledge of the floras of the various regions of the Mediterranean. As I have proposed elsewhere (Heywood, 2001b), the completion of the inventory for higher plants and some other groups of organism is probably possible if the following principles are adopted: better use and deployment of existing resources better use and deployment of existing data improvement of infrastructure and training in developing countries use of internationally agreed standards and conventions in floristic works

6 more realistic targeting of floristic projects avoidance of current duplication or overlapping efforts establishment of teams and adoption of a familybased approach new models of inter-institutional cooperation the use of electronic information storage and handling of text and images more focused and better-targeted outputs new approaches to nomenclature joint planning and operations with applied sectors such as conservation, agriculture, forestry, land use. A Mediterranean Flora or electronic information system It is over 25 years since discussions were held on the feasibility of preparing a Mediterranean Flora. At the time the conclusion was reached that such an attempt was premature, on both scientific and political grounds. Subsequently, Med-Checklist was initiated although so far only three volumes have been published and it is not clear whether the remaining volumes will be completed. The question remains as to whether a Flora of the Mediterranean should still be a goal and, if so, how it should be achieved. An alternative approach would be the preparation of regional Floras, with one covering, say, the Maghreb countries (plus Libya) and another covering the East Mediterranean (plus Egypt). Another possibility would be a West Mediterranean Flora (essentially Iberian Peninsula plus the Maghreb) that would make great sense in phytogeographical terms. And in the East Mediterranean, perhaps a Flora that would extend beyond the Mediterranean countries to the Middle/Near East or South West Asia as a whole. Electronic web-based preparation and publication of floristic and taxonomic projects Serious consideration will have to be given to whether any future Mediterranean comprehensive or regional floristic initiative should be produced as conventional hard copy, or be electronic and web-based in the form of continually updated information systems and databases that are beginning to replace conventional time- and information-limited Floras (and, to a lesser extent, monographs). Perhaps both may be needed. In fact, a start for the Mediterranean has been made with the Euro + Med PlantBase project, the first phase of which has been funded by the European Union. This will provide an on-line database and information system for the vascular plants of Europe and the Mediterranean against an up-to-date and critically evaluated consensus taxonomic core. It will be a rich resource of information on the plant diversity of the Euro-Mediterranean region S-9 that will be of use to a wide variety of users, including professional biologists, agronomists, foresters, horticulturists, conservationists, environmental planners, and national and international conservation organizations. It is being produced in collaboration with botanists and institutions across the region. This project has the advantage of being able to build upon the ESFEDS database developed at the University of Reading in the 1980s (Heywood et al., 1984), to which datasets (partly in electronic form) from the published parts of Med-Checklist are being added, along with data extracted manually from the Standard Floras of the non-european Mediterranean countries and from Standard Floras (or parts of them) published after the relevant volume of Flora Europaea. This part of the Euro + Med project will provide, as one of its first outputs, a consensual Synonymic Conspectus of the Plants of the Euro-Mediterranean Region (SCOPER) that will be revised periodically (possibly every five years) but with Internet links to later data, both verified and unverified. It will be available on the Internet. This will provide the scientific community, the European Union, individual countries, and conservation agencies with a single key source of electronically available information on the plant biodiversity of the region. Another output will be a first catalogue of the whole of the Euro-Mediterranean region, from which one will be able to assess accurately for the first time how many species occur in the Mediterraean. One should not underestimate the problems involved. Although computer technology has evolved at a dramatic rate, until recently taxonomists have been slow to embrace the methodologies of informatics. There have been major achievements in the development of electronic taxonomic databases and information systems since the earlier initiatives in the sixties and seventies in biological databanking, such as the first (and alas unsuccessful) Flora North America project, Flora de Veracruz, the ESFEDS database, ILDIS, the Vicieae and the Brassica ILDIS databases, PRECIS, and ISIS. Examples of recent initiatives, apart from ESFEDS and Euro + Med PlantBase, include ETI, Species 2000, and Species Plantarum, Synthesis of the North American Flora, Flora Iberica, and Heukels Interactieve Flora van Nederland (see also Heywood, 2001b). Another welcome development is that some Floras, especially those aimed at amateurs, show considerable innovation in the presentation of information within the printed format approach, using layout, graphics, color, and typography. Such developments reflect a significant change in attitude by taxonomists, who paid scant attention to the Heywood / The future of floristics in the Mediterranean region

7 S-10 needs of consumers or rarely even considered who the consumers might be. Taxonomists have been notoriously dismissive of their consumer groups, despite the frequently made claim that taxonomy is the underpinning of biology and that classifications serve a wide variety of purposes. This change in attitude to the users of taxonomy forms part of what I have termed the new paradigm for taxonomy (Heywood, 2001a,b): A new paradigm for taxonomy It must be socially responsive to the needs of society It must be efficient and consistent in its methods and procedures It must be both scientifically sound and practicable It must be cooperative and work closely with other disciplines, both pure and applied It must be outward-looking It must be forward-looking It must be accessible It must be able to produce outputs that are suitable for various consumers It must make use of the best practice in informatics THE CONTINUING SPECIES PROBLEM Species richness (the number of species) is the most frequently and widely applied measure of biodiversity, although in no way does it equate with biodiversity itself. According to Williams and Humphries (1996), species richness also appears to give a good approximation to character richness, which they advocate as a currency of difference and diversity. This would sound like good news for the taxonomist, but our detailed knowledge of species richness is surprisingly deficient, in terms of both absolute and relative measures and the record of taxonomic achievement is a very mixed one. This is true both at a global and a regional level. The fact that there is still no agreement on how to define species is an embarrassing complication and the question of species definitions is one of major concern in attempts to inventory the world s biodiversity (Heywood, 1998). The lack of information on what species are present on this planet for many groups, and lack of detailed distribution patterns for most of them (α-,β-,γ-diversity), makes it difficult to undertake proper analyses of the patterns of biodiversity and plans for its conservation. Since the conservation of biodiversity clearly has a cost, it is reasonable that decision-makers should expect us to provide quantitative measures of biodiversity that allow comparisons to be made and relative importance of different sets of data evaluated before they agree to the measures we propose. Israel Journal of Plant Sciences CONCLUSIONS In focusing on floristics, we must not forget that there are enormous gaps in our knowledge of the demography, biosystematics, population biology, reproductive biology, and so on for most species, even in the European parts of the Mediterranean. Conservationists, plant breeders, ecologists, and restoration biologists need this kind of information, not just what grows where, however essential that is as a starting point. Moreover, despite the great efforts that have been made to produce Red List and Red Books of threatened plants, including some impressive works in the Mediterranean region, and the compilation of the 1997 IUCN Red List of Threatened Plants (Walter and Gillett, 1998) or the more recent 2000 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the number of threatened species for which management plans have been prepared is unfortunately very small. Thus, targeted conservation of threatened species in ecosystems (in situ species conservation) is still a poorly understood concept with little successful practice to provide guidance. Only a few major in situ species conservation experiments have been undertaken, such as the recently completed GEF-supported project in Turkey for the in situ conservation of the genetic diversity of selected plant species of importance in agriculture, another GEFsupported project for the conservation of agrobiodiversity (including crop relatives and wild fruit trees) in the Fertile Crescent, and the Ammiad Experiment for the conservation of diploid emmer wheat in Israel. Lack of knowledge of what species live where, and how they relate to one another, is one of the key barriers to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity: We must go beyond floristics and inventory and consider how our work can contribute to these greater goals. The challenges for the Mediterranean region are still daunting but the rewards will be immense. REFERENCES Bolòs, O. de, Vigo, J Flora dels Països Catalans. Vol. 1. Editorial Barcino, Barcelona. Boulos, L Flora of Egypt checklist. 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