WCVP: Fabaceae checklist

Abstract

A preliminary, global, community endorsed checklist for Leguminosae (Fabaceae). The World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP) is a global consensus view of all known vascular plant species (flowering plants, conifers, ferns, clubmosses and firmosses). The Leguminosae (or Fabaceae) subset contains names that have been peer reviewed by taxonomic experts from the Legume Phylogeny Working Group’s (LPWG) Taxonomy Working Group and names that are in the process of being edited and reviewed. WCVP aims to represent a global consensus view of current plant taxonomy by reflecting the latest published taxonomies while incorporating the opinions of taxonomists based around the world. WCVP is built on the nomenclatural data provided by the International Plant Names Index (IPNI), which is the product of a collaboration between The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, The Harvard University Herbaria, and the Australian National Herbarium, combined with the taxonomic data provided by an international collaborative programme with a large number of contributors from around the world. Our thanks go to the compilers and editors of IPNI and WCVP and in particular all the users who have contributed corrections over the past decades, improving those data for the global user community. We acknowledge the long term contribution of the International Legume Database and Information Service (ILDIS), which provided a species naming infrastructure that was used over many decades by the legume systematics community and which remains the foundation for the taxonomy of many legume species. Our particular thanks for the WCVP Fabaceae subset go to: Bob Allkin (Kew), Nick Black (Kew), Markus Döring (GBIF), Joe Miller (GBIF) and Carole Sinou (Canadensys, Université de Montréal) for their help setting up the project and publishing the data. The initiative to update legume species names on WCVP was led by Marianne le Roux (LPWG, South African National Biodiversity Institute) and Anne Bruneau (LPWG, Université de Montréal). The LPWG Taxonomy Working Group is the Taxonomic Expert Network for the legumes in World Flora Online.