Flora Indochina, Presenting information on the knowledge of the Flora in Indochina

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This website aims to present the available resources in Indochina in terms of herbarium collections, to give access to the main research results on vegetation and plants, to allow online identification for plants in some conservation areas, and to share information through a collaborative network.

Indochina is considered as one of the highest biodiversity region in the world. The region encompasses a number of complete mountain ranges, such as the Annamite Mountains and it features isolated massifs and plateaus and extensive areas of limestone karst. As a result of a high diversity of environmental and climatic conditions, Indochina supports a wide variety of habitats and thus high overall biodiversity. This diversity has been further increased by the development of areas of endemism as a result of the region's geological and evolutionary history.

Biodiversity is generally located in forest ecosystems. In Indochina, the variety of forest types is immense, from evergreen forests with a high diversity of canopy tree species, through semi-evergreen forests and mixed deciduous forests, to relatively species-poor deciduous dipterocarp forests. Limestone karst supports distinctive vegetation formations, with high levels of endemism. Mono-dominant and mixed formations of conifers are distributed in montane areas, while open, fire-climax coniferous formations are distributed on drier hills and plateaus subject to regular burning. Lowland floodplain swamp or flooded forests are a feature of the permanently and seasonally inundated lowlands, most especially in Cambodia, and mangrove forests are distributed along the extensive coastal areas of the region.

The plant richness is between 10,000 and 20,000 species of vascular plant, and it is suggested that as many as 50 percent of the angiosperms and gymnosperms are endemic to the region. Irrespective of their precision, these figures indicate that Indochina has extraordinarily high plant diversity, and is a major center of plant endemism. It represents the convergence of several distinctive plant migration roads: the Indian, Malesian and Sino-Himalayan. Plant families particularly notable in the region include the Orchidaceae and Dipterocarpaceae.

The knowledge of plant biodiversity in Indochina is supported by various projects:
Initiative Sud Expert Plantes
Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund

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