Floras yesterday, today and tomorrow

Descriptive Taxonomy The Foundation of Biodiversity Research, eds M. F. Watson, C. H. C. Lyal and C. A. Pendry. Published by Cambridge University Press. 

An exhaustive Flora would be a work of many years and many volumes and it is as a handbook to what is already known, and a pioneer to more complete works, that the present is put fon/vard. .. the adoption of as concise a style and phraseology as is consistent with clearness, and the avoidance of repetition in the descriptions and remarks on each species will enable me to compress the whole into a portable form. 

Not only are concise descriptions clearer, they enable the Flora to be more compact. Hooker was clearly aware that a more compact Flora is produced more quickly and cheaply. However, a problem with this concise approach was that, although the species are usually grouped with shared characters, the descriptions are often not particularly diagnostic and frequently not usable by themselves to separate similar species. In many cases, accurate identification is only achievable with reference to a comprehensive, well-curated herbarium. This is compounded by the fact that only synoptic (not dichotomous) keys are included. Nevertheless, the Flora of British India was a revelation for a descriptive Flora in English. Although much of the taxonomy has been subsequently refined, it is a good example of the benefits of producing a usable product warts and all . In the absence of an alternative (until very recently) it has been much used and copied by later workers. 

A concise, pragmatic approach to writing Floras was also championed by another British colonial botanist, George Bentham. At the beginning of his Flora hongkongensis, Bentham (1872) espoused the principles of writing a concise Flora, which were 

Bentham s aphorisms have much in common with the ethos of the first modem Flora, Lamarck and de Candolle s Flore frangaise. Bentham is clear a Flora is not a repository of knowledge for the taxonomic community, but is a tool for effecting identifications of plants, both by specialists and non-specialists alike. 

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