CLASSIFICATION OF PALMS - COURTESY OF PALMWEB

Click here to link directly to Palmweb. (You may return to this site by hitting the back button, or select the International Palm Society link from the Palmweb website)

Palmweb, developed by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK is a portal that brings together information on palm taxonomy (the scientific classification of Palms) from online or printed authoritative, reliable sources that are currently dispersed and sometimes difficult to access. It is being developed as a part of the European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy (EDIT), a project that aims to facilitate both the access to taxonomic data and the collaboration among taxonomists by taking advantage of Information Technology.

Palmweb includes the current nomenclature and synonymy of palms, descriptions for over 700 palm taxa, protologues (original descriptions) for around 1200, images for almost 850 and maps with TDWG (Taxonomic Database Working Group) level 3 distribution for all the recognized species. The focus is on taxa that are currently accepted although protologues for synonyms are also available.

The names in the taxon tree that gives structure to the site are provided by the World Checklist of Monocotyledons, a synonymised checklist of palms hosted at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The tree shows only the currently accepted names but it is possible to find synonyms using the search function.

There is a page for each taxa from genus level to infraspecific levels, and within a taxon page the content is organised in tabs.

(Note that you will be leaving this website, but can return by clicking on the IPS link on the Palmweb website).