A final year's award will support Dr. Richard Howard of Harvard University and his colleagues in completing the fifth and sixth volumes of the flowering plants inventory of the Lesser Antilles. The floristic area of the West Indies, especially the islands of the Lesser Antilles was one of the first visited by 18th century European explorers. Existing floras or plant-lists for the area are nationally oriented for the Dutch, Danish, British, and French island groups. The present flora will incorporate all botanical records, including those of cultivated plants, and represents the first comprehensive inventory of the botanical resources of the area. Archival studies in Europe have revealed the sources and dates of introduction of many of the exotic, but not necessarily cultivated, species of the flora. The Flora of the Lesser Antilles includes descriptions of plant families, genera, and species, with identification keys for practical use; data on synonymy of scientific names in the old literature; references to taxonomic monographs; general distributions of taxa geographically; ecological data; and common names. Data on the status of rare or endangered plants are included. Each genus is illustrated with original art work of a representative species not previously illustrated in the scientific literature.
