World Flora Online
Published December 21, 2025 | Version 2025-12
Dataset Open

World Flora Online Plant List December 2025

Authors/Creators

  • 1. Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
  • 2. IPNI (International Plant Names Index)

Contributors

Data curator (59):

Description

The consensus taxonomy of plants used as the backbone for the World Flora Online (WFO) portal, and issued as editions of the WFO Plant List.

New versions of this checklist are released every six months in June and December: this is release 2025-12.

The history of data development for the WFO taxonomic backbone is given on the WFO Plant List background page. Taxonomic names are incorporated into WFO from nomenclators International Plant Name Index (IPNI) for vascular plants, and Tropicos for bryophytes. Taxonomic and nomenclatural updates are incorporated from the WFO's Taxonomic Expert Networks (TENs) and the World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP), facilitated by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

This data repository includes the following files:

  • wfo_plantlist_2025-12.zip The Catalogue of Life Data Package of the WFO Plant List. This is the most expressive standards based form of the list.
  • plant_list_2025-12.json.gz JSON formatted version of the WFO Plant List. This has been designed for direct import into a schemaless instance of a SOLR index and is used to drive the WFO Plant List API (https://list.worldfloraonline.org) which in turn drives the WFO Plant List in the portal. This is recommended if you want to use a local, read only version of the list rather than use the API.
  • plant_list_2025-12.sql.gz This is the complete production database (minus API keys) as a MySQL backup file. It can be restored directly to a MySQL 8.0 or later instance if you require the list in SQL format.
  • ipni_to_wfo.csv.gz A file mapping all the IPNI IDs we track to their associated WFO IDs.
  • deprecated_names_lookup.csv.gz A list of the WFO IDs of deprecated names.
  • deduplicated_ids_lookup.csv.gz A list of the WFO IDs that have been dedupliated with the prescribed ids that should be used in their place.
  • families_dwc.tar.gz Individual Darwin Core Archive files for each of 734 recognized families. If you want a single family in DwC download and expand this file. These files exclude deprecated names.
  • _DwC_backbone_R.zip A single Darwin Core Archive file containing non deprecated names and taxa for use in the existing R package.
  • _uber.zip A single Darwin Core Archive file containing all names and taxa even those that are deprecated along with some extra data columns.

Notes

New versions of the WFO Plant List are released each solstice, in June and December.

Files

_DwC_backbone_R.zip

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