Resources for Wildflowers of Europe and the Mediterranean
Notes
- This is a quick list of significant resources for the different countries of Europe. Let me know to add any new ones.
- Layout of this Page - The resources below are organised by country groups, roughly north to south. To find a specific country, use the Find feature in your browser.
- Viewers for PDFs etc -
- Sumatra (PDF, DJVU) recommended: fast searching, fast display, uses few resources. Windows.
- Foxit Reader (PDF): decent, very useful annotation tools to eg markup a key you are working through with notes, crossings out etc, but can be slow with archive.org pdfs. All platforms.
- WinDjView/MacDjView (DJVU): nice viewer, can show all instances of a find. Windows, Mac.
- DjView (DJVU): can export part or whole documents to PDF, DJVU. Windows, Mac, Linux, OS/2.
- Acrobat (PDF) will be familiar. All platforms.
- archive.org - Many of the online book links take you to archive.org. There's generally an easy link on each main page to download the pdf version but if you click "See All Formats" you can also choose other formats such as DJVU, TXT and original scans. If there are illustrations I would recommend PDF format viewing (sumatraPDF handles well, other programs may be slow), if there is just text I would recommend DJVU if you can as djvu is very fast and small but if so would encourage always downloading the pdf and txt versions as well (right-click, save as). To see original scans go to the _jp2 format and click view contents and either download the jp2 (=jpeg2000) files or the jpg version (their numbers should correspond to page numbers in the pdf/djvu): these originals can sometimes provide clearer renditions where the pdf/djvu has been saved at too low a visual quality for your purposes; jp2 files will probably be clearer than the jpg and can be opened in eg IrfanView or XNView etc.
Europe-Wide
Forums
Misc
- Contact - Contact on Facebook (David Merrick)
- Illustrations - Search in plantillustrations.org - this even allows the results to be restricted to a country. Other illustrations can be found by doing a Google Image search for your latin name with the word 'illustration' or by searching the latin name and under Tools - Colour - Black and White, since this will return drawings and diagrams not photos.
- List to Images allows you to paste in a list of plants and get a grid of searches to explore them; it highlights the ones you've viewed and has markers and a notes column - click its 'Help' for more details
- 🕮 Print Books at summerfieldbooks.com
- 🕮 The Bulbous plants of Europe and their allies (Grey-Wilson, Mathew, Blamey)
- 🕮 Field Guide to Orchids of Britain and Europe (covers Europe, Middle-East, N Africa, Canaries) - 250 orchids (and subspecies)
- 🕮 Alpine Flowers of Britain and Europe, new edition (Grey-Wilson, Blamey) - apx 2400 species. The 1st ed has 1900 species.
- 🕮 Ferns, Mosses and Lichens of Britain and Northern and Central Europe
- 🕮 Flora Europaea, 5 vols, Text-only work; often available cheaply. Vol 1 was revised as ed 2.
PDFs of ed 1 are at zenodo.
- 🕮 The European Garden Flora, 5 vols, 2nd Ed - Text-only work; 1st ed often available cheaply but some surprising bargains for v2 set.
- 🕮 N Europe - The Illustrated Flora of Britain and Northern Europe (Grey-Wilson, Blamey) - 2400 plants described and ill. in colour. This can be obtained cheaply 2nd hand, the updated version with 7000 illus. is "Cassell's Wild Flowers of Britain and Northern Europe".
- 🕮 N Europe - Grasses, Sedges, Rushes & Ferns of Britain and N Europe (Fitter, Fitter, Farrer) - 590 species (420 illustrated)
- Zones in Europe : Floristic • Biogeographic • Vegetational
Flora of the Alps ("Alpenflora"), 1922, pp160, by Gustav Hegi - (in German but searchable, illustrated).
- Illustrated Flora of Central Europe ("Illustrierte Flora von Mittel-Europa") v1-7, 1906-1931, by Gustav Hegi - 13 volumes and subvolumes, downloadable from the links at the end of this article (for each open link and click download icon).
- Flora of the Alps (florealpes.com) gallery, in French.
- Directory of country-specific botany forums - map search seems to have stopped, which I'll fix.
- Flora Mediterranea - yearly journal with the articles for download as PDFs.
- Botanical Latin - dictionary explaining botanical latin such as used in plant names.
Misc Genuses and Familes
- Cichorieae (Sow-thistles etc) - cichorieae.e-taxonomy.net (detailed descriptions)
- Eucalyptus -
Northern Europe
•
Australia
- Ferns
- Farne im Herzen Europas, Georg Eberle, 1970 (German)
- Illustrierte Flora von Mittel-europa, Vol 1, Gustav Hegi, 1984 (German)
- Les Fougres et plantes allies de France et d’Europe occidentale, 2001, Prelli (French)
- Scandinavian Ferns, 1993, Benjamin Gaard
- The Ferns of Britain and Ireland, 1997, C.N. Page (THE British book but expensive)
- The Illustrated Field Guide to Ferns and Allied Plants of the British Isles, Jermy & Camus
- Welsh Ferns, 1997, Hyde & Wade
- joseluisperezcalo.com gallery
European Ferns, 1879, James Britten, ecopy
- Fraxinus (Ash) -
International Fraxinus Study Group
- Gentians -
Illustrated Key to Alpine Gentians (PDF, in French)
- Hieracium, Pilosella -
Hieracium - Pilosella - Hawkweeds (Hawkweed group, international but tends to get posts from Europe)
- Lamium -
PDF World Revision (202-page, 1987; keys, descriptions, maps, illustrations)
- Orchids
- Quercus (Oak) -
International Oaks
- Rosa (Roses) -
Wild Roses of Europe
- Taraxacum (Dandelions) -
Northern Europe
•
Britain & Ireland
•
France
Maps
Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Finland (Boreal + Arctic)
Regional
- Flora Nordica, multi-volume (Jonsell) - in English, part-published - covers Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, including the Faroe Islands, Svalbard and Jan Mayen.
Iceland
Norway
Sweden
Finland
British Isles, Denmark, Netherlands, Canaries, Macaronesia (Atlantic)
Denmark
British Isles
- Species Resource Explorer
-
British Isles •
Scotland •
Ireland •
Ulster •
Wales
British specialised botany forums eg orchids, grasses, aquatics, dandelions etc
- 🕮 Illustrated : Wild Flowers of Britain and Ireland, 2nd ed (Fitter, Fitter, Blamey) - ed 1 basically identical.
- 🕮 Illustrated : Collins Flower Guide, ed 2
- 🕮 Text-Only (brief descriptions): New Flora of the British Isles (C Stace) ed 4 - the standard botanical key
- 🕮 Text-Only (full descriptions) : Flora of Great Britain and Ireland, 5 vols (Sell & Murrell)
- 🕮 Text-Only: Flora of the British Isles (Tutin & Clapham) ed 3 - older but often available cheaply 2nd hand
British Isles - Illustrated : New Illustrated Flora, 2 vols (Butcher), 1961 - vol 1 and vol 2 at (choose zip
BSBI Maps and Tools
Plant Atlas 2020
- wildflowerfinder.org.uk gallery and id tips
- bioimages.org.uk gallery
- aphotoflora.com gallery
- british-wild-flowers.co.uk gallery
- naturespot.org.uk (Leicestershire) - choose a gallery
Netherlands
Canaries & Macaronesia
Canary Island Plants (Plantas Canarias)
Flora of Macaronesia
PDF Checklist of Macaronesian Plants (Sommerfeltia, Flora of Macaronesia, 1993, Hansen & Sunding) - best viewed in 2-page layout in a PDF viewer so paired pages are viewed together, one of the pages has geocode column headers which can be found in the intro (PDF p11, print p9).
Taraxacum (Dandelions) of Azores, Madeira & Canaries
- jagel.nrw/kanaren - 432 species + 169 ornamentals
- Canary Islands -
Histoire naturelle des Iles Canaries, 1836, by Webb, Berthelot & Oudart - Botanical portion is vol 3 part 1 and vol 3 part 2 secs 2, 3 & 4 (ult); descriptions in latin but species names clear.
Continental (Central Europe)
General
"Flore complète illustrée en couleurs de France, Suisse et Belgique" can be downloaded as 13 volumes (1 GB, final volume inc. consolidated index) as follows -
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
Germany
Poland
Belgium
Flore complète illustrée en couleurs de France, Suisse et Belgique, 1913, 13 vols - details at start of this section.
Czech
Luxemburg
France & Jersey
- Species Resource Explorer (France and Territories)
Botany and Flora of France (Botanique et Flore de France)
Taraxacum / Dandelions (Taraxacum France)
Orchids of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (SE France) (Groupe de PACA orchidées sauvages)
Orchids of Poitou-Charentes Vendée (CE France) (Orchidées Poitou-Charentes Vendée)
Mosses and Lichens (Mousses et Lichens) (=bryophytes/bryologues)
Mosses and Liverworts (Bryologia Gallica & Ultramarina - Mousses et Hépatiques de France métropolitaine et d'outre-mer)
- Flore complète illustrée en couleurs de France, Suisse et Belgique, 1913, 13 vols - details at start of this section.
A Flora of the Island of Jersey by Lester Garland, 1903, pp230, ecopy.
Flore descriptive et illustrée de la France... (Coste), 3 vols (ecopy, well-illus, French).
Flore de la région méditerranéenne de la France by Acloque, 1904, pp890 (French), ecopy.
- Flower Photo Search (tela-botanica.org); under 'Cherchez une plante de' enter the latin name, click the search button (magnifier), if there are multiple results click the heading of the result item of interest, and then click the Illustrations tab.
- Yonne dept. (mid-France)
- Maps (mnhn.fr) : search for species (greeny box on left) and view the bottom map in the results.
Austria
Austrian Wild Plants (Pflanzen Österreichs)
- Gallery (lefnaer.com) - search box top-left; many of the details here are very high-quality, see eg Lactuca quercina.
Hungary
Switzerland
Flore complète illustrée en couleurs de France, Suisse et Belgique, 1913, 13 vols - details at start of this section.
- Switzerland (and adjacent alpine areas) -
The Flora of the Alps, 2 vols (pp322 & pp372) - ecopy: vol 1 and vol 2
N. of Black Sea
Ukraine
Spain, Portugal, Balearic Islands, Gibraltar (Iberian Peninsula)
Spain
Spain, Iberia, Balearic Islands, Canaries (Fotografía Flora Silvestre de la Península Ibérica, Baleares y Canarias)
Orchids of the Iberian Penninsula, Balearics & Canaries (Orquídeas silvestres de la Península Ibérica,Baleares y Canarias)
Orchids of Andalucia (Orquídeas Silvestres de Andalucía)
Lichens of Spain (Líquenes de España)
Flora Iberica (pdfs, well-illus, Spanish) - on side menu choose Familias (Family) or Géneros (Genus), then select from droplist, then download the resulting PDF link.
Flora Vascular de Andalucia - Occidental (3 vols) and Oriental (1 vol) - (Spanish, Pdfs).
Aquatic Flora of Spain ("Flora acuática española. Hidrófitos vasculares"), 323 pages in Spanish with keys, text, photos and illustrations.
Invasive Alien Plants of Spain ("Atlas de las Plantas Alóctonas Invasoras en España"), 386 page PDF in Spanish with photos and text.
Atlas of the non-native Flora of Madrid, Vol 1 (Monilophyta-Gymnospermae) and
Vol 2 (Nymphaceae-Gramineae) ("Atlas de la flora alóctona de Madrid").
- Castilla -> Burgos -> Hormaza (floressilvestresdehormaza.blogspot.com).
- Asturias (N Coast) (ignacio56.blogspot.com) - see right-hand menu for familes, top left for search & translate option.
- asturnatura.com
- Flora Catalana - Plant list with attribute search
Portugal
Gibraltar
Balkans (Slovenia to Moldova to Greece)
Balkans (region)
- See also the individual countries below - Slovenia, Croatia, Romania, Moldova, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Albania, Greece, Turkey-in-Europe.
- 🕮 Flowers of Greece and the Balkans by Oleg Polunin, 1988, new ed, pp680 - anticipate mostly text with separate section of 80 pages colour photos and 52 pages b/w illustrations.
- 🕮 also the 1980, ed 1, pp680 is probably virtually the same.
Croatia
Romania
Serbia
Bulgaria
North Macedonia
Albania
Greece
Turkey-in-Europe
Italy & Malta
Italy
- Species Resource Explorer
Italy (Erbe Selvatiche D'italia)
Orchids (Orchis e ophrys ecc...Orchidee spontanee)
Sicily (Flora Spontanea Siciliana)
Sardinia (Flora Spontanea della Sardegna)
- Digital Flora of Italy covers 10120 (9134 more regular) taxa and has maps and photos
- flora.it has an excellent genus/species list which takes you to individual genus keys and species descriptions with maps etc. The links on the site don't work however they work on the following 'corrected' version, so if you use it to jump to genus/species you can if you need an English version paste the resulting Italian into Google Translate.
- Iconographia floræ italicæ, ossia, Flora italiana illustrata, 1921, ecopy - nearly 4000 illustrations of plant taxa (incl. variants).
- pallano.altervista.org - about 1400 species from Monte Pallano in considerable detail (see left hand margin species list)
- actaplantarum.org - Comprehensive; search using different criteria
Flora Romana vol 1 (1822, pp464, Latin) - In latin but the plant names are obvious and descriptions reasonably intelligible without translation
Flora Romana vol 2 (1822, pp558, Latin) - ditto, vol 2
Flora of the Colosseum in Rome (1855, pp309, English)
Malta
Mediterranean
Mediterranean (region)
- 🕮 Wild Flowers of the Mediterranean (Grey-Wilson, Blamey)
- West Mediterranean (florasilvestre.es) - species viewer
Eastern Mediterranean
Turkey
- Species Resource Explorer
Flora
Anatolian Orchids (Anadolu Orkideleri)
Flora of Turkey and the East Aegean Islands, 9 vols (Davis) - English - v expensive although e-copies exist on the web.
Turkey's Native & Alien Trees and Shrubs, pp688 - Free PDF, Turkish, but well illustrated.
Gallery (turkiyebitkileri.com)
Maps (bizimbitkiler.org.tr) and older version - these use somewhat old data from herbaria.
🕮 The Flora of Turkey and the East Aegean Islands, 11 vols (9 initially, and 2 subsequent update volumes) - English treatment of the Turkish Flora, PDFs can often be found floating around the web, and some volumes are loanable for free on archive.org.
🕮 Illustrated Flora of Turkey (Resimli Türkiye Florası), projected 30 vols, about 1000 pages per volume - In Turkish, vols. up to 3a currently available. PDFs available which can be copy-pasted into Google Translate, they are all a very good price if bought from a Turkish site (about £27 = 36 euro = 920 turkish lira for 2000 pages vol. 2 & 3a), such as the turquoise books marked eKitap ("e-book"), Cilt = "volume", at
ANG. Prices from Amazon seem to be 10 x higher. A few of the genera are freely available as PDF drafts
here although the final form has maps and illustrations and more details etc.
Cyprus
Syria
Lebanon
Israel
N Africa
N Africa region
Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia
Egypt
Outside Europe / Aliens
Americas
Asiatic
Australia
Trees
Since trees are often planted in common across different countries, they are included here as a separate section.
Regional ones are listed first, followed by countries in alphabetical order.
- Old World - Crataegus Sect. Crataegus and Nothosect. Crataeguineae (pp200, K Christensen) - "Revision of Crataegus Sect. Crataegus and Nothosect. Crataeguineae (Rosaceae-Maloideae) in the Old World"
- Europe, N Africa, Orient - Oaks of Europe, North Africa and Orient (pp36, Kotschy) - "Die Eichen Europas, Nordafrikas und des Orients"
- Europe and Mediterranean - Oaks of Europe and Mediterranean (pp204, 1937, Schwarz) - "Monographie der Eichen Europas und des Mitteimeergebietes"
- Britain : Warwickshire - Trees of Warwickshire, Coventry and Solihull Pt 1 (Intro) (pp37, S Falk)
- Britain : Warwickshire - (Pending?) Trees of Warwickshire, Coventry and Solihull Pt 2 (gymnosperms (conifers), palms, ginkgo and tree ferns)
- Britain : Warwickshire - Trees of Warwickshire, Coventry and Solihull Pt 3 (Acacia to Morus) (pp113)
- Britain : Warwickshire - Trees of Warwickshire, Coventry and Solihull Pt 4 (pp121, 2011, S Falk)
- Britain : Warwickshire - (Pending?) Trees of Warwickshire, Coventry and Solihull Pt 5 (tree collections and other important tree locations)
- Britain : Warwickshire - Trees of Warwickshire, Coventry and Solihull (Veteran Trees) (pp44, S Falk)
- Cyprus - Oaks of Cyprus (pp8, Jablonski)
- Spain - Oaks of Spain (pp200, 1950, C Vicioso) - "Revision del Genero Quercus en espana"
- Turkey - Trees and Shrubs of Turkey, native and alien (pp688, U Akkemik) - "Türkiye'nin Doğal-Egzotik Ağaç ve Çalıları"
- Turkey - Trees and Shrubs of Parks (pp71, 2017, T Birişçi, H Turel, M Alkan) - "Kültürpark'ın Ağaç, Ağaççık ve Çalıları"
- Turkey - Trees and Shrubs of Balıkesir (pp350, 2013, R Efe, A Soykan, İ Cürebal, S Sönmez) - "Balıkesir'in Ağaçları ve Çalıları"
- Turkey - Lecture Notes for Forest Engineers (pp 199, M Saribaş) - "Serbest Orman Mühendi̇sleri̇ İçi̇n Ders Notu"
- Turkey - Oaks of Turkey (pp87, 1984, F Yaltırık, many illus. and maps) - "Türkiye'nin meşeleri - Teşhis Kılavuzu"
- Turkey - Oaks of Turkey (pp20, I Hedge, F Yaltırık, English trans. with fewer illus.)
- Turkey - Oaks of Turkey (pp378, 2013, S Öztürk) - "Türki̇ye Meşeleri̇ Teşhi̇s ve Tani Kilavuzu"
- France - History of Trees and Shrubes (pp635, 1809, R L Desfontaines) - "Histoire des arbres et arbrisseaux".
- Netherlands - Roses - Wild Roses of the Netherlands (pp173, P Bakker, B Maes, H Kruijer) - "De wilde rozen (Rosa L.) van Nederland"
- W Europe - Quercus - Quercus L. (Fagaceae) Vegetative Key To Species Cultivated In Western Europe (pp34, J Langhe, 2012)
- Cultivation - Pinus - Pinus L. (Pinaceae) Vegetative Key To Species In Cultivation (pp14, 2014, J Langhe)
- - Acer L. and Dipteronia Oliv. (Sapindaceae) Vegetative Key To Species In Cultivation (pp18, 2018, J Langhe, D Crowley)
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