Welcome to Flora Malesiana

Flora Malesiana (FM) is an international flora project aiming to name, describe and inventory the complete vascular plant flora of Malesia, the region including Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei Darussalam, the Philippines, Timor-Leste and Papua New Guinea. The Malesian biodiversity hotspot harbours a staggering vascular plant diversity with more than 31,300 currently accepted species reported from the region (Plants of the World Online). Published FM volumes, CD-ROMs and other output cover about half of these species and have been cited thousands of times, not just in highly specialized taxonomic journals, but also in journals which focus on a wide range of fields such as climate change, plant ecology, and conservation, as well as policy documents. For example, the treatment of the Dipterocarpaceae (Ashton, 1982), which comprise the economically most important timber tree species in Southeast Asia, has been cited more than 850 times (Google Scholar citations, March 2023) highlighting the importance of the baseline data presented in the series.

The family treatments are not published in a systematic order but as they come available by the scientific efforts of some 100 collaborators all over the world. Each family treatment contains keys for identification, descriptions of the recognized taxa from family to variety, and a large amount of information (with literature references) on, e.g., taxonomy, variability, synonymy, typification, distribution, habitats and ecology, morphology and anatomy, phytochemistry, and uses. Attention is given in the first place to the indigenous species but non-native, cultivated or escaped species are also treated (described and keyed out) or at least mentioned. Drawings and photographs illustrate the treatments, and as a general rule at least one species of each native genus has a full-page drawing. There are two series: I, Seed Plants, and II, Pteridophytes.

FM Secretariat

For all questions related to Flora Malesiana, please contact the FM Secretariat (Daniel Thomas, Singapore Botanic Gardens; Marco Roos, Naturalis Biodiversity Center).

If you want to contribute to the Flora Malesiana project, please contact the FM secretariat or the respective family treatment coordinators (see ‘To Be Revised‘ tab).

Editorial Board

General Editor: P.C. van Welzen

Editorial Committee: D.W. Kirkup, L.G. Saw, P.C. van Welzen

Board of the Foundation Flora Malesiana

Y.J.S. Rahajoe, Research Center for Ecology and Ethnobiology, BRIN, Indonesia (chairperson)

E. Smets, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Netherlands (vice-chairperson)

M.C. Roos, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Netherlands (secretary/treasurer)

E.M. Agoo, De La Salle University, Philippines

K. Chayamarit, BKF (Forest Herbarium), Thailand

R. Chung, Forest Research Institute Malaysia

D. Cicuzza, University Brunei Darussalam, Brunei

D. Crayn, James Cook University, Australia

O. Gideon, PNG University of Technology, Papua New Guinea

C.D. Heatubun, Universitas Papua Negeri, Manokwari, Indonesia

M. Kato, University of Tokyo, Japan

D. Madulid, Philippine National Museum, Philippines

D. Middleton, Singapore Botanic Gardens, Singapore

A. Latiff Mohamed, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Malaysia

P. Pinto, Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Timor-Leste

T. Utteridge, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, UK

J. Wen, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, USA

E. Widjaja, LIPI, The Indonesian Institute of Sciences, Indonesia

P. Wilkie, Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, UK

P.C. van Welzen, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Netherlands (general editor)

Zhang X.-C., Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Botany, Herbarium Beijing (PE), China