Welcome to the WFO PlantList documentation site.
The World Flora Online (WFO) is the international initiative to achieve Target 1 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation and provides a global overview of the diversity of plant species. It is the essential tool for conservation planners, policymakers and practitioners at all levels.
The WFO PlantList (WfoPlantList) is a collaborative project within the WFO to maintain a consensus nomenclature and classification of plants to act as a taxonomic backbone for the WFO and other projects.
This website acts as a documentation hub for the different applications and repositories that are used to compile and publish the WFO PlantList. What you need to know should either be here or linked to from here. If something is missing please contact us.
The WFO PlantList is compiled from multiple sources and published to multiple places. Technically this involves a series of components that are described below. These components may change through time but the conceptual model that describes the nomenclature and classification is common across these components and should persist. If this is your first visit we recommend you familiarize yourself with the problem domain and how we approach it by reviewing the concepts page now.
Main components and data flow
1. Rhakhis - editing platform
Rhakhis (from the Greek for backbone) is the system we use curate the current version of the checklist.
1a. Rhakhis backbone management
This system is hidden from the general user.
1b. Rhakhis backbone user interface
2. WFO Plant List API - publishing platform
3. WFO PlantList user interface
4. Data Repositories
The provides machine readable access to the WfoPlantList so that it can be used in other projects.
This website acts as a documentation hub, a single point of truth, for the different projects that
Why does this exist?
There are a complex mess of repositories and services that are all over the place and we need to capute them in a single spot.
A single source of truth for documentation.