The Revisionary Work on the Flora of Sri Lanka

One effect of the flora-writing age of the twentieth century has been a Revised Handbook to the Flora of Ceylon (1968 – 200): its Reversionary work began under the aegis of the Ceylon Flora Project supported by the Smithsonion Institute, the Ceylon Department of Agriculture and the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya. The scientific programme of the work has covered the broad ranks of taxonomy based on material of field explorations and fallowed by herbarium study representative of 195 families of the phanerogamic flora. The fruit of the attempt has produced a Descriptive Flora of a semi-monographic nature that presents a systematic study of plants of the mid nineteenth century, along with an emphasis on current nomenclature allied to the details of specific distribution and ecology. A salient emphasis is laid on the type method governing a stable nomenclature over Trimen’s faulty method of circumscription; and nomenclatural correctness has been improved from collections either of past authors or those of the Flora Project; new collections have thus also helped to better the correctness of former plant names; and an additional support to this advance are the Critical Notes. Often a necessary tag to descriptions. Yet more research into the summarised salient features of the Project’s Reversionary Work may yet reveal further areas of interest in the systematic botany of Sri Lanka.