Format: ORAL

Lorenzo Peruzzi1, Fabrizio Bartolucci2, Gabriele Galasso3, Gianni Bedini1, Stefano Martellos4, Gianniantonio Domina5, Fabio Conti2

1 University of Pisa, Italy 2 University of Camerino, Italy 3 Natural History Museum of Milano, Italy 4. University of Trieste, Italy 5 University of Palermo, Italy.

Approximately two decades ago, the Working Group for Floristics, Systematics and Evolution of the Italian Botanical Society initiated a collaborative project to develop a checklist of the Italian vascular flora. The first project output was a book, published in 2005, followed by a significant update in 2018. Another update is scheduled for release in early 2024. The project triggered two crucial requirements: the digital storage and publication of floristic records, and the dissemination of the checklist through an online information system. Consequently, the collaborative floristic project Wikiplantbase (http://bot.biologia.unipi.it/wpb/italia) was launched in 2013, and in 2018 the online Portal to the flora of Italy (https://dryades.units.it/floritaly/index.php) was introduced to the scientific community. These two online tools operate in tandem, ensuring continuous updates and interoperability. They thus constitute a unified system, serving as a robust and reliable reference for the nomenclature, taxonomy, and distribution of the Italian vascular flora. Additional resources are slated to be incorporated into the system. These include a database storing protologues, type localities and other pertinent information about type designations for accepted plant names described in Italy, and the Chrobase.it database (http://bot.biologia.unipi.it/chrobase/index.php), focusing on chromosome numbers. Furthermore, the The Italian flora of human interest database (https://www.optima-bot.org/index.php/en/projects/8-category-en-gb/217-the-italian-cwr-whp-database) will contribute to the expanding repository. An ongoing effort involves establishing interoperability between this system and external initiatives, such as the World Flora Online (https://www.worldfloraonline.org/), Plant of the World Online (https://powo.science.kew.org/), and the Euro+Med Plantbase (https://europlusmed.org/). This integrated approach aims to create a more comprehensive and interconnected resource for sharing and accessing a wide spectrum of botanical data.