Flora ( pl. : floras or florae ) is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring ( indigenous ) native plants. The corresponding term for animals is fauna , and for fungi , it is funga . Sometimes bacteria and fungi are also referred to as flora as in the terms gut flora or skin flora .
6-519: The Arcto-Tertiary Geoflora is a hypothesized floral assemblage that once covered the Northern Hemisphere , from roughly the late Mesozoic to mid Cenozoic Eras . First proposed by the paleobotanists J.S. Gardner and C. Ettinghausen in 1879, the concept was intended to answer questions about the disjunct distribution of identical or closely related plant species : for instance, magnolia and tulip trees are native to both
12-504: A historic era as in fossil flora . Lastly, floras may be subdivided by special environments: The flora of a particular area or time period can be documented in a publication also known as a " flora " (often capitalized as "Flora" to distinguish the two meanings when they might be confused). Floras may require specialist botanical knowledge to use with any effectiveness. Traditionally they are books , but some are now published on CD-ROM or websites . Simon Paulli 's Flora Danica of 1648
18-604: Is probably the first book titled "Flora" to refer to the plant world of a certain region. It mainly describes medicinal plants growing in Denmark. The Flora Sinensis by the Polish Jesuit Michał Boym is another early example of a book titled "Flora". However, despite its title it covered not only plants but also some animals of the region, that is China and India. A published flora often contains diagnostic keys. Often these are dichotomous keys , which require
24-676: The Southeast United States and southern China and Indochina . As envisioned, the ATG had a wide distribution when the global climate was much warmer than it is currently, a situation strengthened by the closer position of some of the continents in late Mesozoic to early Cenozoic times. With the onset of global cooling and the Ice Ages , the ranges of these tropical to subtropical species were left in isolated pockets of warmer climates. The southern, more tropical equivalent of
30-594: The ATG was the Neotropical Tertiary Geoflora. Flora The word "flora" comes from the Latin name of Flora , the goddess of plants , flowers , and fertility in Roman mythology . The technical term "flora" is then derived from a metonymy of this goddess at the end of the sixteenth century. It was first used in poetry to denote the natural vegetation of an area, but soon also assumed
36-593: The meaning of a work cataloguing such vegetation. Moreover, "Flora" was used to refer to the flowers of an artificial garden in the seventeenth century. The distinction between vegetation (the general appearance of a community) and flora (the taxonomic composition of a community) was first made by Jules Thurmann (1849). Prior to this, the two terms were used interchangeably. Plants are grouped into floras based on region ( floristic regions ), period, special environment, or climate. Regions can be distinct habitats like mountain vs. flatland. Floras can mean plant life of
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