An updated checklist of vascular plants of Myanmar

Myanmar is one of the Southeast Asian countries where biodiversity richness is very high as well as under various anthropogenic threats. Its broad latitudinal range, heterogeneous topography, and tropical monsoonal climate make the country exceptionally rich in plant biodiversity. However, botanical exploration in Myanmar still lags, hindering a full understanding of the floristic diversity of the country and leading to a large gap in taxonomic knowledge of its flora. The latest checklist of Myanmar plants (including 11,800 species) was published over 20 years ago and clearly needs significant and comprehensive revisions to be in line with modern taxonomic classification systems. In this regard, the present study investigated the species richness of Myanmar flora based on herbarium specimens, taxonomic literature, and online databases. Therefore, it resulted in an updated checklist consisting of 14,020 species in 2,701 genera and 292 families of vascular plants known from Myanmar. Among them, there are 13,314 native species and 706 introduced species in Myanmar. In Myanmar, there are 864 endemic species which need proper conservation actions. In comparison, the number of species in the updated checklist has increased by 2,220 species more than those of the previous checklist, mainly due to the discovery of new species and new records for the country. The updated checklist has been taxonomically verified with voucher specimen-based comparisons, which will be useful for subsequent analyses of biodiversity research and conservation action.