Comparison of classifications of vascular plants of China

Abstract

China has 31,362 species of vascular plants, more than any country on the planet except Brazil and Colombia, and this number represents 8%-12% of the world diversity of vascular plants. With the two largest completed floristic projects in the world, a full documentation of the vascular plants of China has been published twice over the past 54 years: the Chinese-language Flora Reipublicae Popularis Sinicae (FRPS), 1959-2004, and the English-language Flora of China (FOC), 1994-2013. With the advent of molecular phylogenetics the past half century has witnessed dramatical changes of classifications of vascular plants. In this paper, we compare the circumscriptions of all families of vascular plants occurring within China in FRPS, FOC, and the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG) III system when applicable, and summarize familial assignments of all controversial genera in the different classifications. Such comparison to some extent reflects the history of classification of vascular plants and differences between classical morphology-based classifications and modern DNA (mainly chloroplast) sequence data-based classifications of vascular plants