French Guiana, a small department of France in northeastern South America, still harbors one of the largest expanses of tropical wilderness in the world. Situated in the geographic center of the department, the small village of Saul is surrounded by 133,600 hectares of pristine rainforest proposed as a French national park in 1975. This project, which is based upon botanical explorations since 1976 by the principal investigator and since 1965 by his French collaborators, is designed to produce a flora of the proposed park. The flora will allow scientists and tourists alike to be able to identify the ferns and flowering plants of the park. As a result, the area will become more valuable as a living laboratory for the study of tropical nature. It will promote the discovery of evolutionary relationships in one of the most species rich areas in the world and provide the baseline data needed for the recuperation of degraded rainforests throughout northeastern South America. Another goal of the project is to promote ecotourism in the area by making a visit to the park a more educational experience. The flora will be well illustrated with line drawings and colored photographs, and the keys for plant identification will be made as user friendly as possible. Editions of the flora will be published in French (edited by the French collaborators) and English.
