The Plant List — A working list for all plant species

⚠ Version 1 of The Plant List has been superseded.

You should refer instead to the current version of The Plant List.

The Angiosperms (Flowering plants)

Aphelandra flava Nees

Angiosperms are seed-bearing vascular plants. Their reproductive structures are flowers in which the ovules are enclosed in an ovary. Angiosperms are found in almost every habitat from forests and grasslands to sea margins and deserts. Angiosperms display a huge variety of life forms including trees, herbs, submerged aquatics, bulbs and epiphytes. The largest plant families are Orchids, and Compositae (daisies) and Legumes (beans).

There are an estimated 352,000 species of flowering plants or angiosperms.

You can also browse genera found in Angiosperms.

View statistics at the bottom of the page.

Families in Angiosperms

Statistics

Species of Angiosperms contained within The Plant List belong to 406 plant families and 14,038 plant genera.

The Plant List includes 904,649 scientific plant names of species rank for the Angiosperms. Of these 273,174 are accepted species names.

The Plant List includes a further 184,795 scientific plant names of infraspecific rank for the Angiosperms. We do not intend The Plant List to be complete for names of infraspecific rank. These are primarily included because names of species rank are synonyms of accepted infraspecific names.

Species names

The status of the 904,649 species names for the Angiosperms recorded in The Plant List, are as follows:

Status Total
Accepted 273,174 30.2%
Synonym 421,698 46.6%
Unplaced 15,282 1.7%
Unassessed 194,495 21.5%

All names

The status of the 1,089,444 names (including infraspecific names) for the Angiosperms recorded in The Plant List, are as follows:

Status Total
Accepted 298,536 27.4%
Synonym 575,340 52.8%
Unplaced 15,343 1.4%
Unassessed 200,225 18.4%

Of these names,

A further 1,241 name records indicate where names have been misapplied.

The confidence with which the status of the 904,649 species names recorded in The Plant List for the Angiosperms, are assigned as follows:

Confidence level Accepted Synonym Unplaced Unassessed Total
High confidence 141,434 216,039 0 0 357,473 39.5%
Medium confidence 123,058 175,013 0 0 298,071 32.9%
Low confidence 8,682 30,646 15,282 194,495 249,105 27.5%

The source of the species name record found in The Plant List for the Angiosperms, are as follows:

Source of record Accepted Synonym Unplaced Unassessed Misapplied Total
ILDIS 19,879 21,893 0 18 1,055 42,845 4.7%
IOPI 496 806 21 0 0 1,323 0.1%
iPlants 3,423 7,631 338 25 7 11,424 1.3%
TICA 27,587 44,403 0 31,730 0 103,720 11.5%
Tropicos 40,963 77,588 0 24,304 0 142,855 15.8%
WCSP 119,597 190,964 8,577 2,130 121 321,389 35.5%
WCSP (in review) 61,229 78,413 6,705 135,929 58 282,334 31.2%