Flora of Romania Help RO
Page last updated: April 2019
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Navigation shortcuts
To Home Page: Click on The native Flora of Romania logo in all pages except this one & the Home page itself. The logo is placed at the top right of the page header. Click on the Flora of Romania text at the top left of this page.
To Data Repository Main Page: Click on the "Query" logo in all Query pages (Q_21, Q_22; Q_31-Q_35; Q_51; Q_61). The logo is placed at the top left of the page header.
To Taxonomy Main Page: Click on the "Taxonomy" logo in all subordinated Taxonomy pages (Q_11-Q_14). The logo is placed at the top left of the page header.
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Administrative divisions of Romania
The most well-known and commonly used divisions of Romania are (a) historical provinces (rom: provincii istorice), from here on called provinces, and (b) counties (rom: județe). The provinces, much older than the counties, have their borders originating in the middle ages. The counties are more recent; their borders or even the counties themselves have been altered several times at least since 1711 (in Moldova & Muntenia). This project conforms to the present day status, which was largely established in 1968, and then ammended in 1981 - when GR, CL counties were (re)established and IF county was largely reduced. Note: The counties referred to by volumes 12 and 13 of FMR are conformant to the administrative reform of 1968.
More information on Romanian counties and their history is available here.
Provinces include a variable number of counties. For simplification purposes, FloraRO assumes that the counties' borders coincide with the borders of provinces, so that counties are seamlessly included. In reality, this is not always true: a number of counties have a significant percent of their territory belonging to more than one province - this is true for counties SM, SJ, AR, CS, MH, VL, OT, and VN. To keep things simple, SM has been included in Maramureș, SJ and AR in Crișana, CS in Banat, MH, VL and OT in Oltenia and VN in Moldova. When using queries Q_31 to Q_35 one should remember this.
A query displaying the Romanian provinces and the counties they include is available here.
Geographical references of this project
This project uses two types of geographical references: [a] a hierarchical three-tier system of geographical divisions called province, region and area, and [b] a single-tier system which is more simple, but sometimes more inaccurate, using counties.
In system [a], tier 1 contains the provinces as described above. For convenience, larger provinces have been further divided into "subprovinces", labeled "province_N" and "province_S", each covering roughly half of the province territory. Selecting a subprovince reduces the number of corresponding regions/areas and enables the users to zoom in easier on any region or area he/she targets. Obviously, however, these divisions are not relevant by themselves to the climate or habitats that are decisive factors for the development of native plants.
In October 2018, the list of provinces has been enlarged with the 3 large divisions of the Romanian Carpathian Mts (Munții Carpați din România), the subordinated regions/areas being transferred from the provinces they had previously been subordinated to.
Tier 2 consists of geographical divisions of Romania, herein called regions, subordinated to the provinces.
Tier 3 consists of areas included in a region. The areas of this project have been defined more or less ad-hoc, mostly using the placenames referred to by botanical papers and other sources used by this project. For the sake of improvement, some may be adjusted in the future; it should also be noted that, in most cases, the areas and/or regions present today in the Data Repository do not fully cover the entire province.
Queries Q_31 și Q_32/1-5 use provinces and regions as geographical references for the selection of areas (placenames).
System [b] uses counties, both because an important part of the botanical sources of this project mentioning placenames or protected areas use counties as geographical references, but also because access points for all the areas (placenames) are located in a county.
Queries Q_33 - Q_35 use counties as geographical references for the selection of areas (placenames).
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Queries
Queries display the data stored in the Data Repository. They can be divided into 3 categories: taxonomy related (Q_02, Q_11-14), geobotany related (Q_31-35), and source related (see Sources Section of the Main Menu).
Q_13 shows a list of accepted names and synonyms for a large part (~75%) of the species of the native Romanian flora. It also highlights the differences that exist between the 3 most recent Floras (FVC, CRR, FIS) published in Romania and 2 of the most relevant international web sites that contain taxonomical information on plant species, namely TPL The Plant List and E+M Euro+Med. Note: Errors may exist in the displayed data, or the content of the web sites may have changed since the last check. Taxons that have not been checked are noted with #.
A group is a collection of taxons containing accepted name(s) and their synonyms, refering to a single species. These can differ from one source to another, so sometimes the same taxon name appears in more than one group.
Groups and TADs (Taxon Attribute Descriptors) have been used to code the status and properties of a given taxon as listed by the 6 sources (FVC, FIS, CRR, E+M, TPL, Other) that have been cross-referenced (compared). A legend of the codes used for TADs is displayed by pressing the TADs link available at the bottom of the page.
In order to see all groups a given taxon belongs to, enter the taxon's name and select "All" from the "Sources comparison" listbox. An interesting case study is the taxon Campanula glomerata.
Q_02 shows an index of all native plant species which have been entered into this project, some of their characteristics and, where available, original photos of them.
Q_32 is the most complete query, encompassing all information on plant species-placenames (S/P) existing in the Data Repository. Because there is no way to fit all the columns of Q_32 in a single page of reasonable width, the results are displayed in 5 subsections, selectable with the drop-down list Query type. For Species Names - in any of the queries Q_31-Q_35 - use only accepted names as listed in the Taxonomy section. See this section to determine correspondence with TPL or E+M. Using any other name (e.g. that of a synonym etc.) will generate an empty result.
Q_32 also offers detailed information on the sources used by this project.
Q_31, Q_33-Q_35 display species-placename (S/P) data using various geographical criteria inputs:
- Q_31 province,
- Q_33 county; protected area,
- Q_34 county; area, and
- Q_35 county; access point, i.e. cities/towns/chalets etc. from where a named botanical area can be accessed.
Note: Access to the entire content of the Data Repository - including e.g. placename information of endangered (DD, EN, CR, EX) species - is granted only to authenticated users, after contacting FloraRO. FloraRO reserves the right to selectively grant authenticated access.
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Input forms
All queries have an input form that enables users to focus on desired query output from the Data Repository. Inputs may be drop-down lists, textboxes or checkboxes.
Drop-down lists contain a number of pre-defined options. A drop-down list can be independent or linked with other drop-down list(s). In Q_32 (which is actually a group of queries), the 3 lists related to geography are linked. Any change of option in List 1 will change the contents of List 2 and List 3
Text boxes enable filters that are more flexible than drop-down lists. Any text can be written in the textbox, but sometimes rules have to be observed. Hints that list the rules are displayed in a light yellow box by hovering the mouse pointer over the text to the left of the textbox, listbox etc.
Wildcards are effective in getting the query to return more focused data. Wildcards are available in 2 ways: (1) if hint contains "Wildcards (%) enabled", the % wildcard character can be used both before and/or after the entered text; (2) if hint contains "Wildcards (%) autoinserted", the % wildcard character will be automatically added to the entered text by the form itself.
Texts may have to be entered, depending on the type of textbox, as
- (a) case sensitive, or lowercase text,
- (b) text with diacritics: ă, ș, ț, á, é, ł, ö, ä etc. (usually in author names),
- (c) a comma delimited list, or
- (d) two numbers separated by a hyphen (for time intervals).
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Text input examples
Taxon names: Enter as follows:
- (a) #Rosa% or #Rosaceae for all species of the family Rosaceae
- (b) Rosa% for all species of the genus Rosa,
- (c) Rosa c% for all species that begin with those letters, like Rosa caesia and Rosa canina,
- (d) Rosa can% or Rosa canina for Rosa canina, and
- (e) %offic% for all species that contain these lowercase letters anywhere in their name.
Use only International & Romanian literature accepted names of plant species as listed in the Taxonomy section. See this section to determine the accepted name. You can use also use Romanian accepted names (if they differ) or synonym names if the [Auto accepted name] option is available in the form and is selected. This option, however, has a number of limitations: (1) No family or genus names can be used; (2) the taxon name must return a single row; i.e. the group the taxon belongs to must have only one accepted name - some groups, especially those containing subspecies level taxons may have more than one.
Ex: Acanthus hungaricus is the internationally accepted name of the species. Acanthus balcanicus is the Romanian accepted name. Acanthus longifolius is a synonym. If [Auto accepted name] is enabled, you can use either; if it is not, only Acanthus hungaricus will return a non-empty query.
Authors' names: In the Taxonomy section, author name abbreviations inside the taxon name can be searched by prefixing the author name with @ and adding a wildcard at its end. Ex: @Borbas%. Diacritics shall not to be used if they exist in the author name abbreviation.
Conservation status codes: Enter a single code (NT) or a list of codes (DD,NT,VU,EN). The order of the codes in the list is irrelevant.
Time intervals: Months (4-7) or years (1970-2005). Months: the # prefix (e.g. #3-5) will force strict inclusion in the interval (3-4, 4, 4-5 etc.); otherwise, any interval - even if partially included - will be returned (2-5, 3-4, 4, 4-9, 2-7 etc.)
Possible errors - and how to avoid them
- Display the hint of the textbox you are about to input text into. This will help to avoid errors.
- Accepted names on this site use cited International sources (mainly E+M) - which may differ from Romanian sources or TPL. Using a synonym in an input form will return an empty query, unless [Auto accepted names] functionality is enabled. To find the accepted name you may want to check the Taxonomy section (accepted names are printed in bold letters).
- If the text is case sensitive, entering only lowercase letters for a taxon name will return an empty query.
- When wildcards are not autoinserted (see hint), not using wildcards will return an empty query.
- Not conforming to the patterns of data input in the examples above will return an empty query.
- Query returns cannot exceed a maximum limit. If the query returnsmore rows than the set limit, a corresponding message is displayed. In most cases, authentication or form input data must be altered to correct this.
If the query is empty (no rows are returned), the message No matching data (0 results found). See Help. is displayed.
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Plant pictures
Plant pictures are available in the Virtual Herbarium section of the Main Menu. Press the Pictures button.
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