Flora of Thailand

Thailand has probably as many plant species as are found in the whole of Europe. Little is known about much of the flora, so the project to produce a Flora of Thailand is one of the most challenging in botany. Various parts are available, as shown on nhbs.com. We welcome Standing Orders from libraries and botanists for all future volumes.

From the publisher's website (June 2005):

The study of the Flora of Thailand, with its estimated 11,000 vascular plants species, has been gathering momentum in the last few years and has now reached a well-advanced stage. The Flora of Thailand Project, whose aim is to produce a complete floristic treatment of the entire vascular flora, really started to take off the ground around 1958 with the Thai-Danish, Thai-Dutch and Thai-Japanese botanical expeditions.

In 1690 E. Kaempfer was the first botanist known to visit Thailand, but he seemed not to have made any collections. Since then several botanists from Europe came to Thailand to collect specimens, Konig was one of the first to collect and write up his findings. Kerr and Seidenfaden, together with T. Smitinand are a few of the most well known botanists. From 1958 until today Thai-Danish, Thai-Japanese and Thai-Dutch botanical expeditions were carried out on a regular basis. In 1965 several botanists already working for decades on Thai flora decided to start the 'Flora of Thailand Project' initiated by K. Larsen (Aarhus) in collaboration with J.E. Vidal (Paris), B.L. Burtt (Edinburgh), L.L. Forman (Kew), C. Phengklai (Bangkok), B. Hansen (Copenhagen), T. Smitiniand (Bangkok), C.G.G.J. van Steenis (Leiden) and C.F. van Beusekom (Leiden).

In 1967 The 'Flora of Thailand Project' is the first and only systematic attempt to inventory, catalogue, describe and elucidate all plant life of Thailand. Today the Editorial Board consist of representatives of principal herbaria i.e. I. Hedge, Edinburgh; J. Dransfield, Kew; K. Larsen, Aarhus; I. Nielsen, Aarhus; B. Hansen, Copenhagen; C. Phengklai, Bangkok; T. Santisuk, Bangkok; J. Vidal, Paris; K. Iwatsuki, Tokyo; J. Parnell, Dublin; M. Roos, Leiden. The 'Flora of Thailand Project' until today resulted in collections containing about 120,000 numbers. The publication of the 'Flora of Thailand' with T. Smitinand (after his death with T. Santisuk) and K. Larsen as editors commenced in 1970 and is still going on.

Seven volumes (in 21 parts) of the Flora have now been published.