| Available in | English |
|---|---|
| Owner | Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew |
| URL | Plants of the World Online |
| Commercial | No |
| Launched | March 2017; 8 years ago (2017-03) |
Plants of the World Online (POWO) is an onlinetaxonomic database published by theRoyal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Following theConvention on Biological Diversity, the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew launched Plants of the World Online in March 2017 with the goal of creating an exhaustive online database of allseed-bearing plants worldwide.[1][2] The initial focus was on tropical African flora, particularly floraZambesiaca, flora of West and East Tropical Africa.[3]
Since March 2024, the website has displayedAI-generated predictions of the extinction risk for each plant.[4]
The database uses the same taxonomical source as theInternational Plant Names Index,[3] which is the World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP).[5]
The database contains information on the world's flora gathered from 250 years of botanical research. It aims to make available data from projects that no longer have an online presence or were never externally available. POWO includes information on the taxonomy, identification, distribution, traits, threat status, and uses of plants worldwide, and it also contains many images.[6]
As of September 2024[update], POWO contained 1,433,000 global plant names, 531,800 detailed descriptions, and 400,900 images.
