KARACHI: The Flora of Pakistan — the most comprehensive and authentic scientific work ever on Pakistan’s flora initiated over four decades ago — has been completed.

The book has 224 volumes containing details of over 6,000 indigenous flowering species.

This was announced by Prof Muhammad Qaiser, a senior botanist and former vice chancellor of Karachi University, at the inaugural ceremony of an international symposium held at KU’s Dr A.Q. Khan Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering.

Titled ‘Plant Life of South Asia’, the four-day event organised by KU’s Centre of Plant Conservation and its botany department, is being attended by local and international scholars from eight countries.

Sharing details of Flora of Pakistan, Prof Qaiser informed the audience that the project funded by the US department of agriculture was initially christened the Flora of West Pakistan. It was launched in 1967 in two institutions, the Gordon College Rawalpindi and KU simultaneously, as they had the best taxonomists in the country at that time. The first volume came out in 1970.

“The then chairman of KU’s botany department, Prof Syed Irtafaq Ali, and Mr E. Nasir, a botany teacher at Gordon College, were the premier researchers who, with the help of other staff, collected the initial data.”

The Gordon College, he said, had a rich collection of around 55,000 plant specimens at that time, the credit for which went to Dr Stewart.

“A major highlight of our achievement is that 85 per cent of the data is collected by local scientists unlike what happened in other regional countries, where foreign scientists wrote on flora of these countries,” said Prof Qaiser, adding that since 1995 his team led by Prof Irtafaq had done the whole scientific project.

“The completion of the project is the result of a team effort. A large number of authors and illustrators have contributed to complete this phase of Flora. On behalf of the editors, I would like to express my deep gratitude for their cooperation.”

A total of 221 volumes were available online while the last three volumes would be uploaded soon, he said.

Prof Qaiser also talked about the environmental threats the country faced, including water pollution, deforestation, desertification and climate change, resulting in variation in rainfall pattern, increase in temperature and melting of glaciers.

He said Pakistan needed good information about its natural resources to address these environmental challenges.

“The book is the first step to understand and make a management plan for our fast-depleting natural resources,” he said.

Prof Irtafaq Ali, also a former KU vice chancellor, described the project as an extraordinary work done by local experts.

“There is a long list of those who have contributed to this remarkable work, including Dr R.R. Stewart, Abdul Ghafoor, Ian C. Hedge, Brian Laurence Burtt and Jennifer Almond,” he said.

He further stated that several directors, curators, and librarians of Kew Herbarium, London, British Museum, Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh, New York Botanic Garden, Natural History Museum, Vienna, had helped in providing herbarium and library facilities to researchers and several contributors had helped revise various families for Flora.

Published in Dawn, February 25th, 2020