Key to the Flora of the Czech Republic

Since the late 1950s there has been a great need for a concise but comprehensive handbook summarizing modern knowledge of the complete flora of the Czech Republic, and setting up standards for scientific and national plant nomenclature. The Identification Key to the Flora of the Czech Republic fills that gap. It is a pocket-size handbook for the field identification of vascular plants of the Czech Republic. It includes more than 4200 taxa (i.e., species, subspecies, hybrid taxa, hybrids and cultivated or wild varieties). Almost 1440 of them are introduced aliens or frequently cultivated plants. Each species can be identified using a number of selected morphological characters. Identification is facilitated by 1400 drawings enabling fieldwork. Morphological and other scientific terms used in the text are explained in a detailed glossary. As each taxon entry is supplemented with brief characteristics of the distribution and ecology and other data (plant height, life form, flowering time, conservation status etc.), the Key is a concise encyclopedia of the Czech flora. Scientific nomenclature was thoroughly revised and the editors also unified the national plant names. The Key was compiled thanks to the close collaboration of 46 botanists (from 16 institutions, 15 people from the Institute of Botany), including seven editors (five from the Institute of Botany). The book represents a basic concise source of information about Czech vascular plants and is useful not only for botanists and other scientists but also for university and secondary school teachers and students, amateur botanists and nature lovers.

Kubát, K., Hrouda, L., Chrtek, J. jun., Kaplan, Z., Kirschner, J., Štěpánek, J. (eds.): Klíč ke květeně České republiky. – Academia, Praha, 928 pp., 1400 illustr. (2002).