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. 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] 

3. Specimen images for species occuring in West Tropical Africa and Central Africa are now available from the Image galleries. The images are also shown on individual species pages. [February 2009]

4. All Dracaena and Sansevieria specimens at Kew are now databased and accessible via HerbCat. There is also a link on each species page to a search in HerbCat for records of that name. However, not every link corresponds to a successful search. I hope we will be able to implement this differently in future so that it is obvious whether or not there are records for a name. The majority of records are recorded under the name the sheet is filed under (which may or may not be an accepted name in the World Checklist of Monocotyledons). Other determinations have not been captured. [November 2010]