The taxonomic circumscription of families follows PPG I (2016) for ferns and fern allies, Christenhusz et al. (2011b) for Gymnosperms, and Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (2016) for Angiosperms, with the exception of Dipsacales (Reveal 2011), Caryophyllales (Hernández-Ledesma et al. 2015) and Boraginales (Luebert et al. 2016). Authors’ citations of plant names were standardized following the Rec. 46A Note 1 of the ICN (McNeill et al. 2012), i.e. according to IPNI (2012). The checklist includes also apomictic taxa belonging to Alchemilla and Rubus (Rosaceae), Hieracium, Pilosella and Taraxacum (Asteraceae), and the Ranunculus auricomus-complex (Ranunculaceae). Taxa at varietal rank and hybrids were not considered. The system organizes 10,898 infra-generic taxa, and 12,887 synonyms, plus 64,001 vernacular names, and an archive of more than 220,000 digital images.

The main data source of “FlorItaly” are the two checklists of the native (Bartolucci et al. 2018a), and alien (Galasso et al. 2018a) vascular flora of Italy, which are updated every six months by a team of researchers of the Working Group “Floristics, Systematics, and Evolution” of the Italian Botanical Society (Bartolucci et al. 2018b, c, 2019a, b; Galasso et al. 2018b, c, 2019a, b). The updates, regularly published on the journal “Italian Botanist”, are integrated in the online version immediately after their publication. Each new online version is labeled with the year plus an “a” or “b”, depending on the semester of the update.

Distribution data (taken from the checklists, and expressed as presence-absence) are given for each of the 20 administrative regions of Italy (two enclave-countries Republic of San Marino and Vatican City State are not considered). When information on the occurrence of a given subspecies for a region is missing, only the occurrence at species level is reported. For each region, the presence and occurrence status of each taxon is provided by using the following categories: a) occurring, b) doubtfully occurring, c) no longer recorded (reliable historical record), d) extinct or possibly extinct, e) recorded by mistake, f) alien at regional and/or national level (casual, naturalized, invasive, undefined invasion status), g) Italian endemic (status attributed to those taxa occurring only in Italy, or in Italy and Corsica, or in Italy and Malta), h) cryptogenic, i.e. a doubtfully native taxon, whose origin in Italy is unknown, i) taxonomically doubtful, j) data deficient (unknown regional distribution; unknown alien status), k) archaeophyte, and l) neophyte. Occurrence status can also be provided at national level, when relevant, with the following categories: i) confirmed/not confirmed; ii) extinct; iii) doubtful; iv) data deficient; v) erroneously reported for the country); vi) endemic; vii) cryptogenic; viii) esoticity (neo- or archaeophyte). Presence and occurrence status at regional level are depicted in a distribution map (see description of a taxon page below), while those at national level are reported as textual information. A national standardized system was developed by Celesti-Grapow et al. (2009a, b, 2010) to identify taxa alien to Italy. Definitions used in the system were provided by Pyšek et al. (2004):

• casual: alien plants that may thrive and even produce offspring occasionally outside cultivation, but that usually disappear, since they are unable to form self-maintaining populations. Hence their persistence relies on repeated introductions;

• naturalized: alien plants that occur with self-maintaining populations without direct human intervention;

• invasive: alien plants that occur with self-maintaining populations without direct human intervention, and produce fertile offspring which can reach considerable distances from the parent individuals, thus being able to spread over a large area;

• archaeophytes: alien plants introduced to Italy before 1492 (approximate date corresponding to the discovery of America);

• neophytes: alien plants introduced to Italy after 1492.

Taxa involved in former domestication processes are separated into two categories:

• culton: plant distinct from its wild relative(s) and capable to conserve its taxonomic independence in cultivation only; records from the wild are regarded as casual occurrences;

• feral: wild plant originated from a culton escaped from domestication, and usually taxonomically distinct from its wild relative; it can either belong to the same taxon of the culton or to a different taxon.

Taxa at varietal rank were not considered; hybrids were considered only for the alien flora.

All of these data are released under a under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

“FlorItaly” makes the checklists data inter-operable with other resources (see below for a comprehensive list) which use the same taxonomy and the same UIDs of the checklist. This is achieved through:

• web services. “FlorItaly” uses a web service embedded into Wikiplantbase (Bagella et al. 2015; Peruzzi and Bedini 2015; Barberis et al. 2016; Domina et al. 2016) to retrieve information on whether it hosts data for a given infrageneric taxon, and generates a link to the Wikiplantbase taxon page, reporting the number of available records. Queries are sent out encoded in KVP format, and results are retrieved encoded in json format. Web services are also used to access some of the “Dryades” resources, especially image archives. In this case, queries are sent out encoded in KVP format, and results are retrieved in XML format.

• direct querying to external databases, in the case of several “Dryades” resources. Since the developers of all the resources of “Dryades” and “FlorItaly” are the same, it was possible to directly access the other databases by querying through taxon name.

• auto-generated links, made to provide access to resources of Acta Plantarum (2020). A link is dynamically generated by using the UID of each taxon in the checklist. This provides access to the I.P.F.I. (Index of Plants of the Flora of Italy) taxon page.

“FlorItaly” has 3 query interfaces: 1) basic, 2) standard, and 3) advanced. In the second and third interface, users are allowed to combine several parameters in order to perform complex queries. The combination of parameters is transparent to the users, and makes use of the two logical operators OR (when two or more parameters are selected, if either is true, the complex expression is true) and AND (when two or more parameters are selected, all of them must be true for the complex expression to be true). The two operators are combined in the queries differently in each query interface (see below). All interfaces allow to query by taxon name. The query can be done by inputting an accepted name, a synonym, or part of their names. The query is case-insensitive, and no special characters are allowed (e.g., querying from a string followed by the character “*” will return no results, since the character “*” is read as text, and not as a “jolly” character). Each interface always returns a list of accepted names and/or synonyms, each giving access to a taxon page.

Basic query interface . It allows to quickly access all the information on each taxon, organized in “taxon pages”, which are dynamically generated from the database. When a synonym is typed as a query string, the thesaurus of synonyms is invoked, providing a link to the accepted name. For each query, a list of all synonyms, if present, is provided after the list of the accepted names. The basic interface also allows to filter the query by family (selecting one family from a drop-down menu). Furthermore, it permits to query the Thesaurus of Italian and local names of Project “Dryades”. When an Italian name is used as query string, the system provides a list of vernacular names together with the related scientific name(s). The latter give access to the taxon pages.

Standard query interface . This interface allows simple queries on national and regional floras by including/excluding: i) taxa known from reliable historical records only; ii) extinct taxa; iii) taxa reported by mistake; iv) taxa known from doubtful records only; v) alien taxa. The first four parameters are combined by the logical operator OR (in the same query users can include/exclude more than one of them). The last parameter (alien taxa) is combined with the others by logical operator AND. This interface can also display the results in the form of an image gallery.

Advanced query interface . This interface allows complex queries on the flora of the whole country, or on the floras of different Operational Geographical Units (OGUs), consisting of one or more administrative regions. If no OGU is selected, the system operates on the whole national flora, including extinct taxa, and those reported by mistake. For Italy, or for any other OGU, it is possible to refine the query by using the following seven groups of parameters:

A) occurrence status: 1) taxa known from reliable historical records only; 2) extinct taxa; 3) taxa reported by mistake; 4) taxa known from doubtful records only; 5) data deficient taxa (those recorded from Italy, but without sufficient knowledge on regional records);

B) alien status: 6) invasive; 7) naturalized; 8) casual; 9) other alien taxa (currently without invasiveness status); 10) cryptogenic taxa (doubtfully native);

C) alien, by period of introduction: 11) neophytes (since 1492); 12) archaeophytes (until 1492);

D) feral/culton status: 13) feral; 14) culton;

E) 15) Italian endemics;

F) 16) exclusive endemics (Italian endemics whose distribution is restricted to the selected OGU);

G) 17) taxonomically doubtful taxa.

Inside each group of parameters, the systems uses the logical operator OR, while among the groups the system uses the logical operator AND, as described for the standard query interface (see above).

The taxon pages, which are the final outcome of a query, display data from the checklist, and aggregate, or link different external resources (Fig. 1).

Figure 1. 

Taxon page for Poa annua L. from FlorItaly [accessed on 18 June 2020]. The page lists taxon name, synonyms, distribution, also depicted in a distributional map, taxonomic position (in this case in the APG IV scheme), an image, links to external resources, Italian names, and a photo gallery.

At the top of the taxon page there is the accepted name, followed by synonyms, and the presence in the 20 administrative subdivisions of the country. Other information, such as whether the taxon is an archaeo-/neophyte, endemic, etc. are reported immediately below, when present.

This first block is followed by two external resources, a link to a cladogram, with the relative taxonomic information, and an image, which are displayed on the left. On the right of the page, a distribution map is dynamically generated by using the presence in the administrative regions, plus the other data on the taxon (e.g. whether it is an invasive).

The cladograms and the taxonomic information are external resources, deriving from an archive of cladograms from Project “Dryades”, which follows Smith et al. (2006), Schuettpelz and Pryer (2008), Ran et al. (2010), Christenhusz et al. (2011a, 2011b), and the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (2016). The image comes from the archive of digital images of vascular plants of Project “Dryades” (see: http://dryades.units.it/cercapiante/index.php).

These two sections are followed by a link to the I.P.F.I. database of Acta Plantarum, and a link to the Wikiplantbase Italy project. Each link reports the name of the resource, and its logo, and opens in a new page. Acta Plantarum is one of the most active groups of amateur botanists in Italy, and the resources present in the I.P.F.I. pages include digital images, altitudinal distribution, growth forms, etymology, discussions, etc. The Wikiplantbase initiatives (Bagella et al. 2015; Peruzzi and Bedini 2015; Barberis et al. 2016; Domina et al. 2016) collect and organize geo-referenced occurrence data (Bedini et al. 2016; Peruzzi et al. 2017) for different administrative regions of Italy. Originally, “FlorItaly” linked each of the regional initiatives, but, since they are growing in number, it was decided to switch to a link to the national Wikiplantbase portal, which aggregates data from all regional initiatives. These links are followed by names from the Thesaurus of vernacular names for Italy of Project “Dryades”, largely based on those proposed by Pignatti (1982), and especially by Penzig (1924).

At the bottom of the taxon page there is an image gallery, which currently derives from the archives of Project “Dryades”. However, since “FlorItaly” can be made interoperable with other resources, potentially other archives can be accessed, and integrated in the taxon pages (or linked as external resources). Images are displayed as thumbnails, and can be enlarged by a simple click. Each image is coupled with metadata that specify author, source, license of use, locality, and date of the shot, and any other metadata, when available. When the license is not specified, the author of the image reserves all rights. Approximately 80% of the images of Project “Dryades” are original, and released under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license, which means that anyone can use them, for any purpose, provided that author, source and license are mentioned.