Foundation Biodiversity, Ministry of Environment and the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), have launched the program 'Anthos' information system of the plants in Spain. The Secretary General for Territory and Biodiversity, and president of the Foundation Biodiversity, Antonio Serrano, and the project director and research professor at the Royal Botanic Garden belonging to the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Santiago Castroviejo, have made today This pioneering initiative in Spain that was born the fruit of the agreement between the CSIC and the Biodiversity Foundation. The program

'Anthos' flower in Greek, grew initially under the project Flora Iberica, also directed from the Royal Botanical Garden (CSIC). This initiative allows citizens to easily and freely accessible via the Internet to the most complete botanical information from Spain, and aims to establish itself as the main tool of our country for electronics professionals, technicians and fans wild.

Www.anthos.es The website offers more than 1,000,000 records, issues information about 11,000 plants in Spain. This page allows queries on families, genera, vernacular names, geographic searches, and pictures. Thus, for each species, which can be accessed both by its scientific name and vernacular, is the distribution map, the synonyms, drawings, photographs, the number of chromosomes, or the list of appointments made by different authors.

Addition, the program 'Anthos' has a very important improvement for the visualization and geographic analysis and data floristic and abiotic variables of the weather as it has adapted to new technologies Geographic Information Systems, GIS.

Moreover, the system displays multiple layers of geographic distribution maps of each of the selected plants to the desired scale and compare the distribution of different species by superimposing their corresponding layers, or superimposed with those for climate data, geological, or soil, which in turn facilitates search of patterns of distribution. You can also download the raw data in a free, in electronic format to various studies.

For plants of the Iberian Peninsula and Balearic Islands, provides the taxonomic treatments for gender in the work already published Flora Ibérica. For other genres, the treatments are first line to the 'Med-Checklist' and the rest to 'Flora Europaea', except for some that is still an original treatment. As for the taxonomic treatment of plants from the Canary Islands, is still offered in the 'Flora of Macaronesia. Checklist of vascular plants.

The geographic distribution maps are developed from published information or data taken from herbaria. Furthermore, it contains information derived from literature, from the Database 'Vascular Plants of the National Parks', the Organismo Autónomo Parques Nacionales.

Also provides color photographs and slides to illustrate the plants in Spanish territory. The films come from Flora Ibérica and other works of importance in the Iberian and Macaronesian flora. The photographs have been acquired from various artists whose name appears at the bottom of each image. Both the photographs and slides are included with a superb quality and character of teaching contributes greatly to the identification of taxa.
 

Source: Real Jardín Botánico (CSIC)