Sol Amazing Lycophytes & Ferns of the Solomon Islands

About this book

Language: English

This book is one of the outputs of the "Census and Classification of Plant Resources in the Solomon Islands" project, which is a collaboration of the Solomon Islands and Taiwan. This project aims bring awareness to the people of the Solomon Islands of their abundant plant resources but also to facilitate the making of conservation plans.

Lycophytes and ferns are two lineages of extant vascular plants including ca. 13,000 species globally. Although a modern flora is lacking for the Solomon Islands, it is estimated these two lineages together represent over 10% of the country's species of vascular plants. During the authors's expeditions from 2012 to 2016 materials of over 10,000 specimen sheets, representing over 400 species, of lycophytes and ferns were collected. Here we have selected and illustrated 370 species as a summary of the diversity of the lycophytes and ferns of the Solomon Islands. Out of those, 51 species are newly recorded for the country and 23 species are unidentified and could be new to science. Specimen vouchers are deposited in the herbaria BSIP, TNM, and TAIF: collection number (SITW#) is provided for each photo.
 
It has to be noted that this book is not a flora and does not include all the species known from the country. Instead, the authors show the spectacular lycophyte and fern diversity of the country with over 1,500 photographs with accompanying information on etymology, diagnostic characters, distribution, ecology, and taxonomic notes for each species. We hope this book will be satisfying for both scientists and a broader audience with an interest in nature.

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