Before the floras—Monographs

Abstract

The proposal is made that writing of national or regional floras is premature, and that systematic resources should be directed toward the preparation of monographs with cladistic analyses. This proposal results from one major consideration: that the preparation of floras does not require rigorous analysis of species definition and delimitation, and therefore the basic data (i.e. the species circumscriptions) are more unreliable than that in monographs. Furthermore, contrary to some published arguments, the data in floras are not presented and summarised in a format compatible with other areas of comparative and applied biology, whereas it is otherwise in a monograph with cladistic analysis. This proposition is based on the author’s experience in preparing both monographs and floristic treatments.