World Checklist of Bamboos and Rattans
Introduction
This book contains a global checklist of all known species of bamboos and rattans. It is an authoritative source of information on accepted species of bamboos and rattans, the correct names that should be applied to them, and the incorrect names that should not be used. It has been compiled from expert data sources, edited extensively by the authors, with additional contributions from numerous reviewers. Together with the accompanying World Atlas of Bamboos and Rattans, it serves as a fundamental biodiversity resource for anybody with an interest in bamboos and rattans. The classification of plants and the recording of their distributions is a growing area of human knowledge. Extensive knowledge gaps are unfortunately still present, especially for diverse tropical plants that are difficult to classify and often impossible to identify by non-specialists. New information is published sporadically in a broad range of literature and can be difficult to find. Global botanical research organisations such as the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew have historically worked to compile data on plants and their distributions from diverse sources to make it available for broader use. This work includes scientific decision making on classifications carried out by taxonomic experts specialising on grasses and palms, both areas of historic expertise at Kew. The taxonomic information presented here is a result of cumulative scientific research into the diversity and evolutionary history of the grass family Poaceae (which includes bamboos) and the palm family Arecaceae (which includes rattans), brought together into a single database called the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families. The printed checklist presented here will be out-of-date as soon as it is published, but the World Checklist will continue to be updated as new information leads to changes. The data are available in searchable format via the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families web site at http://apps.kew.org/wcsp.
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