The Neotropical Flora

FORTUNATO, R. H.

XVII International Botanical Congress, Vienna, Austria

Workshop; Annual Meeting of Organization for Flora Neotropica; 2005

Insternational Association for Plant Taxonomy

The tropics include the region surface between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn and comprise about 40 % of the earth’s land surface.             The tropics contain an overwhelmingly large diversity of the world’s living species, and continue to be focus of intensive biological exploration. There are approximately 250.000 (two hundred and filthy thousand) species of flowering plants on the earth of which near two-thirds, 168.000 (one hundred and sixty eight thousand) are native to the tropics. The Americas is the richest and most poorly known tropical floras, theirs comprises near 93.000 (ninety three thousand) species of flowering plants, more than the floras of Tropical Africa (35.000 thirty five thousand species) and Tropical Asia (close 40.000 forty thousand species).