Dragon Trees and Mother-in-Law's Tongues

e-taxonomy of the Dragon Trees and Mother-in-Law’s Tongues, Dracaena and Sansevieria

The main aim of this project is to provide baseline taxonomic information for these genera, which have major ecological and horticultural significance. Initially this will take the form of a synonymised checklist, with a description for each species, an outline distribution, an image of the protologue, a link to an image of the type where possible, and a reference list. At this stage it will be a resource targeted mainly at the taxonomic community. Subsequently development will include keys, images and additional systematic, ecological, horticultural and other data on the species, broadening its user group. It is anticipated that the project will evolve from a static rendition of the existing classification into a dynamic e-taxonomic system to serve the biological and horticultural user communities. It is being set up by Paul Wilkin (RBG, Kew, UK), Justyna Wiland-Szymanska (Dept. of Plant Taxonomy, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan,Poland) and Odile Weber (RBG, Kew, UK, moderator). Collaborators and contributors are sought wherever the taxa occur as wild plants, in living collections or in herbaria. An EU SYNTHESYS grant to JWS helped to initiate the project.

News items

1. Species pages can be accessed from the top left corner (Species). If you are unsure wether your species is accepted or not, have a look on this list [July 2008]. The number in brackets indicates the number of names in that category.

2. Species descriptions from Bos 1984 (Dracaena of West Africa) and Mwachala and Mbugua 2007 (FTEA Dracenaceae) are now uploaded. [July 2008]