Dr. Julian Steyermark of the Missouri Botanical Garden, with assistance from numerous U.S. and Venezuelan collaborators, will complete a descriptive inventory of the estimated 8500 species of flowering plants and ferns of the Venezuelan Guayana, a region of sandstone mountains and intervening valleys and plains across the northern rim of the Amazon basin. The richness of this flora is shown by the fact that half the species are endemic to the region, known nowhere else in the world. Since the first explorations of this region, made famous by Conan Doyle's stories of "Lost World," numerous expeditions have brought back thousands of unusual and outstanding plants, described in numerous publications. However, no single comprehensive work on the flora of this unique region has ever been published. By amassing all this information into one complete account, the resulting work will provide an essential and important reference for use by ecologists, foresters, conservationists, agriculturists, biogeographers, and taxonomists. Not only will it contain information, whenever possible, on the medicinal and other uses of the species, as well as inclusion of the Spanish and Indian tribal names, but it will include nearly 4000 illustrations of plants, most of them never previously published. The text will also include keys for identification, notes on plant habit and ecological habitats, elevational ranges, and geographical distributions, both within and beyond Venezuela. The resulting work should be an outstanding contribution to botanical science.
