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What is a Flora?
Why does Saskatchewan Need a Flora?

What is a Flora?

A flora is a technical publication containing descriptions and keys to all plant species in a region. The Flora of Saskatchewan will have descriptions, keys, line drawings, and distribution maps of all species in the province. We also hope to produce a CD, to be sold with the book, that will include photographs of all of Saskatchewan's species.

Floras are a fundamental resource for anyone working with plants. The primary purpose of a flora is to allow users to efficiently identify plants in a given region. Floras also provide distribution, habitat, and rarity information about plant species.

Why does Saskatchewan need a flora?

For anyone trying to study plants in Saskatchewan, identification is a vital first step. The current options for plant identification are to either use a broad scale flora (eg., Flora of Canada) or to piece together adjacent regional floras (eg., Flora of Alberta), in combination with checklists. This approach to identifying plants presents several challenges:

- Taxonomy - The conflicting and variable taxonomy found in different sources requires expert evaluation by the user. For example, the modern names and species definitions used in the checklist produced by Dr. Vernon Harms in 2003 have changed greatly from the taxonomy used in the Flora of Canada, which was published in 1978.

- Using Adjacent Regional Floras - Regional floras, like the Flora of Alberta are missing certain species, and contain many species not found in Saskatchewan. The user must then know where in Saskatchewan to use that flora, and what species are missing. Beginning botanists face a significant barrier in learning about Saskatchewan and experienced botanists must waste energy and time figuring out what flora to use.

- Using Large-scale Floras - Saskatchewan is covered in a number of large-scale floras. Several of these floras are out-of-print, use older taxonomy, and contain significant errors. The biggest barrier to practical use of these floras is that they include many taxa not found in Saskatchewan. Botanists using these floras must then wade through many time-wasting steps to get to the right species. Other problems are that they tend to be expensive, quite large, and they do not contain any detailed distribution and habitat information about Saskatchewan taxa.

The Flora of Saskatchewan is an essential, basic resource for anyone studying, or otherwise interested in Saskatchewan botany.