Although India had made major strides in documenting its floristic diversity, this information could not be accessed online in a single source until this deficiency was overcome in the ‘India Flora Online’ database (Sankara Rao & Deepak Kumar 2024). The database is the only initiative of its kind presenting the flora of India that is backed by both herbarium collection and field data. The database was developed by the Herbarium JCB, Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES), Indian Institute of Science (IISc) located in Bangalore.

Here I provide a dataset where the taxa were standardized to World Flora Online (Borsch et al. 2020; taxonomic backbone version 2023.12) by matching names with those in the Agroforestry Species Switchboard (Kindt et al. 2025; version 4). Taxa for which no matches could be found were standardized with the WorldFlora package (Kindt 2020), using similar R scripts and the same taxonomic backbone data as those used to standardize species names for the Switchboard.

Where no acceptable matches were suggested through direct or fuzzy matching, I manually checked for acceptable matches online from the World Flora Online website and documented matches that I deemed acceptable (these were flagged as ‘WorldFlora_online’ in the ‘Match’ column).

References

• Sankara Rao K & Deepak Kumar. 2024. India Flora Online. Herbarium JCB, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. https://indiaflora-ces.iisc.ac.in
• Borsch, T., Berendsohn, W., Dalcin, E., Delmas, M., Demissew, S., Elliott, A., Fritsch, P., Fuchs, A., Geltman, D., Güner, A., Haevermans, T., Knapp, S., le Roux, M.M., Loizeau, P.-A., Miller, C., Miller, J., Miller, J.T., Palese, R., Paton, A., Parnell, J., Pendry, C., Qin, H.-N., Sosa, V., Sosef, M., von Raab-Straube, E., Ranwashe, F., Raz, L., Salimov, R., Smets, E., Thiers, B., Thomas, W., Tulig, M., Ulate, W., Ung, V., Watson, M., Jackson, P.W. and Zamora, N. 2020. World Flora Online: Placing taxonomists at the heart of a definitive and comprehensive global resource on the world's plants. TAXON, 69: 1311-1341. https://doi.org/10.1002/tax.12373
• Roeland Kindt, Ilyas Siddique, Ian Dawson, Innocent John, Fabio Pedercini, Jens-Peter B. Lilleso, Lars Graudal. 2025. The Agroforestry Species Switchboard, a global resource to explore information for 107,269 plant species. bioRxiv 2025.03.09.642182; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.03.09.642182
• Kindt, R. 2020. WorldFlora: An R package for exact and fuzzy matching of plant names against the World Flora Online taxonomic backbone data. Applications in Plant Sciences 8(9): e11388. https://doi.org/10.1002/aps3.11388

Funding

The development of this dataset was supported by the Darwin Initiative to project DAREX001 of Developing a Global Biodiversity Standard Certification for Tree-Planting and Restoration.

The Trees of India (ToI, Version-I) includes data on 3708 tree species distributed across 35 states/union territories of India. The database is based on systematic review of 313 literature sources published from 1872-2022.This compendium is available via Figshare and was described by Mugal et al. 2023:

Khuroo, Anzar Ahmad; Mugal, Muzamil Ahmad; Wani, Sajad Ahmad (2023). ToI, Ver.-I : Trees of India, Version-I. figshare. Dataset. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.23226281.v1

Mugal, M.A., Wani, S.A., Dar, F.A. et al. Bridging global knowledge gaps in biodiversity databases: a comprehensive data synthesis on tree diversity of India. Biodivers Conserv 32, 3089–3107 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-023-02659-y

Here I provide direct and fuzzy matches for taxa listed with accepted plant names in World Flora Online (version 2023.03; Borsch et al. 2020) and the World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP version 10; Govaerts et al. 2021). Matching was done in R through the WorldFlora package (Kindt 2020). The taxonomic standardization process was similar to the one completed during the preparation of the third major release of the Agroforestry Species Switchboard and when preparing the GlobalUsefulNativeTrees database (GlobUNT; https://worldagroforestry.org/output/globalusefulnativetrees).

After matching species with the WCVP, information was compiled on the native distribution documented in the WCVP for level-3 units of the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions that correspond to India, including India (IND), Assam (ASS), West Himalaya (WHM), East Himalaya (EHM), Laccadive Is. (LDV), Andaman Is. (AND) and Nicobar Is. (NCB). Also included after matching with the WCVP is information on the geographic area, lifeform and main biome. Similar information is available when searching for species from Plants of the World Online.

Where a matching species was found in GlobalTreeSearch (Beech et al. 2017; https://tools.bgci.org/global_tree_search.php; accessed on 28th June 2023) filtered for India, the species name in GlobalTreeSearch is shown. Note that GlobalTreeSearch documents the native country distribution of tree species.

Where a matching species was found in the GlobalUsefulNativeTrees database (GlobUNT, version 2023.11) filtered for India, the species name in the GlobUNT database is shown. GlobUNT has been described in the following publication: Kindt et al. (2023) GlobalUsefulNativeTrees, a database of 14,014 tree species, supports synergies between biodiversity recovery and local livelihoods in restoration. Sci Rep 13, 12640. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-39552-1.

See the metadata for information on versions.

Borsch, T., Berendsohn, W., Dalcin, E., Delmas, M., Demissew, S., Elliott, A., Fritsch, P., Fuchs, A., Geltman, D., Güner, A., Haevermans, T., Knapp, S., le Roux, M.M., Loizeau, P.-A., Miller, C., Miller, J., Miller, J.T., Palese, R., Paton, A., Parnell, J., Pendry, C., Qin, H.-N., Sosa, V., Sosef, M., von Raab-Straube, E., Ranwashe, F., Raz, L., Salimov, R., Smets, E., Thiers, B., Thomas, W., Tulig, M., Ulate, W., Ung, V., Watson, M., Jackson, P.W. and Zamora, N. (2020), World Flora Online: Placing taxonomists at the heart of a definitive and comprehensive global resource on the world's plants. TAXON, 69: 1311-1341. https://doi.org/10.1002/tax.12373

Govaerts, R., Nic Lughadha, E., Black, N. et al. The World Checklist of Vascular Plants, a continuously updated resource for exploring global plant diversity. Sci Data 8, 215 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-021-00997-6

E. Beech, M.Rivers, S. Oldfield & P. P. Smith (2017)GlobalTreeSearch: The first complete global database of tree species and country distributions, Journal of Sustainable Forestry, 36:5, 454-489, DOI: 10.1080/10549811.2017.1310049

Kindt, R. 2020. WorldFlora: An R package for exact and fuzzy matching of plant names against the World Flora Online taxonomic backbone data. Applications in Plant Sciences 8(9): e11388. https://doi.org/10.1002/aps3.11388

The developments of this dataset and GlobUNT were supported by the Darwin Initiative to project DAREX001 of Developing a Global Biodiversity Standard certification for tree-planting and restoration.

The global spectrum of plant form and function dataset (Diaz et al. 2022; Diaz et al. 2016; TRY 2022, accessed 15-May-2025) provides mean trait values for (i) plant height; (ii) stem specific density; (iii) leaf area; (iv) leaf mass per area; (v) leaf nitrogen content per dry mass; and (vi) diaspore (seed or spore) mass for 46,047 taxa.

Here I provide a dataset where the taxa covered by that database were standardized to World Flora Online (Borsch et al. 2020; taxonomic backbone version 2023.12) by matching names with those in the Agroforestry Species Switchboard (Kindt et al. 2025; version 4). Taxa for which no matches could be found were standardized with the WorldFlora package (Kindt 2020), using similar R scripts and the same taxonomic backbone data as those used to standardize species names for the Switchboard. Where still no matches could be found, taxa were matched with those matched previously with a harmonized data set for TRY 6.0 (Kindt 2024).

References

• Díaz, S., Kattge, J., Cornelissen, J.H.C. et al. The global spectrum of plant form and function: enhanced species-level trait dataset. Sci Data 9, 755 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01774-9
• Díaz, S., Kattge, J., Cornelissen, J. et al. The global spectrum of plant form and function. Nature 529, 167–171 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038
• TRY. 2022. The global spectrum of plant form and function dataset. https://www.try-db.org/TryWeb/Data.php#81
• Borsch, T., Berendsohn, W., Dalcin, E., Delmas, M., Demissew, S., Elliott, A., Fritsch, P., Fuchs, A., Geltman, D., Güner, A., Haevermans, T., Knapp, S., le Roux, M.M., Loizeau, P.-A., Miller, C., Miller, J., Miller, J.T., Palese, R., Paton, A., Parnell, J., Pendry, C., Qin, H.-N., Sosa, V., Sosef, M., von Raab-Straube, E., Ranwashe, F., Raz, L., Salimov, R., Smets, E., Thiers, B., Thomas, W., Tulig, M., Ulate, W., Ung, V., Watson, M., Jackson, P.W. and Zamora, N. (2020), World Flora Online: Placing taxonomists at the heart of a definitive and comprehensive global resource on the world's plants. TAXON, 69: 1311-1341. https://doi.org/10.1002/tax.12373
• Roeland Kindt, Ilyas Siddique, Ian Dawson, Innocent John, Fabio Pedercini, Jens-Peter B. Lillesø, Lars Graudal. 2025. The Agroforestry Species Switchboard, a global resource to explore information for 107,269 plant species. bioRxiv 2025.03.09.642182; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.03.09.642182
• Kindt, R. 2020. WorldFlora: An R package for exact and fuzzy matching of plant names against the World Flora Online taxonomic backbone data. Applications in Plant Sciences 8(9): e11388. https://doi.org/10.1002/aps3.11388
• Kindt, R. (2024). TRY 6.0 - Species List from Taxonomic Harmonization – Matches with World Flora Online version 2023.12 (2024.10b) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13906338

Funding

The development of this dataset was supported by the German International Climate Initiative (IKI) to the regional tree seed programme on The Right Tree for the Right Place for the Right Purpose in Africa, by Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative through the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Ethiopia to the Provision of Adequate Tree Seed Portfolio project in Ethiopia, and by the Bezos Earth Fund to the Quality Tree Seed for Africa in Kenya and Rwanda project.