Sankara Rao, Visiting Professor and Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES), Indian Institute of Science (IISc.), launched “India Flora Online”, a digital database of the flora of India on Monday at the IISc. 

The database, which is the country’s most comprehensive attempt to document its plant wealth, “fulfils the country’s need of bringing the country’s plant or floral wealth into one searchable source,” said Professor Rao.

India Flora Online, which also includes a record of plants from Afghanistan, Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Pakistan, is the fourth such plant database initiative he has been instrumental in launching,following Digital Flora of Karnataka (2014), Digital Flora of Eastern Ghats (2019), and Flora of Peninsular India (2019).