Flora of the Canary Islands – revised checklist to a classic arena of botany

Abstract

The Canary Islands are a popular location for botanical collections that resulted in a series of seminal works, including the description and documentation of many endemic plant species (Fig. 1, 2, 3) in herbaria. Viera y Clavijo, Christ, Webb, Berthelot, Sventenius, Pitard, Kunkel, or Bramwell, to name but a few, majorly contributed to the knowledge about the flora of the Canary Islands. Alexander von Humboldt’s botanical description of Tenerife during his stay in 1799 also motivated Charles Darwin to explore the island. Unfortunately, Darwin was not allowed to set foot on land during his voyage with the Beagle due to quarantine restrictions. In recent years, a number of data bases containing detailed information about the plants of the Canary Islands emerged. This botanical legacy evokes the expectation that detailed information about the flora of the archipelago is available, with high agreement about taxa and status between different sources. To test this expectation, we elaborated an extensive floral checklist for the Canary Islands, documented which taxa are accepted in global taxonomic reference systems, and additionally checked their coverage in databases that are a common sources in biogeographical and ecological research.