Brazil Eco Adventure Tours
Rainforest - Hiking & Biking - Wildlife

Flora brasiliensis, an on - line information system about Brazil's flora, was launched by FAPESP during the COP8 in Curitiba. It uses high resolution digitized images of the plates as a base. The Missouri Botanical Garden is responsible for digitizing all plates.

Flora brasiliensis was published between 1840 and 1906 by the Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius , August Wilhelm Eichler, and Ignatz Urban, with the participation of 65 specialists from various countries. It contains taxonomic treatments of 22.767 species of Brazilian angiosperms, held in 15 volumes, divided in 40 parts, with a total of 10.367 pages.

At age 23, the German Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius was chosen by the Austrian Emperor, Franz I, as one of the members of an entourage, which would accompany the Archduchess Leopoldine to Brazil. The Archduchess was recently married to the Brazilian Emperor, Pedro I, and the scientific expedition to be embarked upon by these naturalists was a part of her dowry. The goal of the expedition was to spend two years collecting specimens and documenting the natural history of Brazil.

He travelled in Brazil for three years, accompanied by the zoologist Johann Baptist von Spix, covering c. 10,000 km between Rio de Janeiro and the upper Amazon, on horseback, on foot or in a canoe. Martius collected c. 20,000 specimens of plants and dedicated the rest of his life to his Brazilian botanical collections. He edited the first volumes until his death in 1868, when it was continued by August Eichler, and finally completed by Ignatius Urban in 1906. Flora Brasiliensis is still the only complete Flora of Brazil and remains the primary reference for botanists working in Brazil.