The arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi are a globally distributed group of soil organisms that play critical roles in ecosystem function. However, the ecological niches of individual AM fungal taxa are poorly understood.

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The taxonomic circumscription of Allium saxatile s.l. (Amaryllidaceae), widely distributed from Italy to China, has been controversial with the number of accepted species ranging from three to seven. The aims of this study include a morphological and molecular revision of the group, a thorough nomenclatural study of available names and the reconstruction of possible phylogenetic relationships in the A. saxatile group. We studied c. 2000 herbarium specimens and successfully sampled 86 accessions of the A. saxatile group and a few related species to reconstruct a molecular phylogenetic tree based on internal transcribed spacer (ITS) and two plastid DNA regions (rpl32–trnL and trnL–trnF). The monophyletic A. saxatile group consists of 15 geographical entities united in two geographically justified clades. Two yellow‐flowered species, A. obliquum and A. petraeum, were clearly nested in the A. saxatile clade in the ITS and plastid DNA analyses. The oldest names in the group, i.e. A. saxatile and A. globosum from the Caucasus, represent genetically identical populations and should be synonymized. The taxonomic conspectus in this article includes 15 species and a nothospecies. We describe five new species (A. austrodanubiense sp. nov., A. schistosum sp. nov., A. cretaceum sp. nov., A. montanostepposum sp. nov., A. kirilovii sp. nov.), a nothospecies (A. × agarmyschicum nothosp. nov.) and raise a variety to species level (A. rubriflorum comb. nov.). © 2015 The Linnean Society of London, Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 2015, 178, 67–101.

World herbaria with 387.5M specimens (Thiers 2019) are being rapidly digitised. At least 79.9M plant specimens (20.6%) are already databased throughout the globe in the standard form of GBIF-mediated data. The contribution of smaller herbaria has been steadily growing over the last few years due to cost reduction, usage of platforms and solutions developed by the leaders. A web-resource the Moscow Digital Herbarium (Seregin 2020b) was launched by the Lomonosov Moscow State University in October, 2016 for publication of specimens imaged and databased in the Moscow University Herbarium (MW). As of 31 December 2018, the web-portal included 968,031 images of 971,732 specimens digitised in MW. This dataset is available in GBIF (Seregin 2020). The global trend is largely the same in Russia, where a dozen herbaria started to scan their holdings after imaging of the nation’s second largest herbarium (Kislov et al. 2017, Kovtonyuk et al. 2019, Seregin 2020a). In 2019, we started to use Moscow Digital Herbarium as a web-repository for digitised herbarium specimens from some Russian collections, starting with the Herbarium of Tsitsin Main Botanical Gaden, Russian Academy of Sciences (MHA). Due to this, a single-university system became a multi-institutional consortium in April 2019 (Seregin 2020a). The dataset of the Moscow collections and partly of the Eastern European collections of the MHA Herbarium is now available in GBIF (Seregin and Stepanova 2020). MHA Herbarium imaged 64,008 specimens from Moscow Region and partly from other regions of Eastern Europe at 600 dpi and provided key metadata. These data are now fully available in the Moscow Digital Herbarium and GBIF. Complete georeferencing of the specimens from the City of Moscow was a key task in 2020. As of May 2020, 50,324 specimens, including 49,732 specimens from Russia, have been georeferenced (78.6%) and 39,448 specimens have fully-captured label transcriptions (61.6%). Based on these data, we give a detailed overview of the collections including spatial, temporal and taxonomic description of the dataset.

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The "Flora of Russia" project on iNaturalist brought together professional scientists and amateur naturalists from all over the country. Over 10,000 people were involved in the data collection. Within 20 months, the participants accumulated 750,143 photo observations of 6,857 species of the Russian flora. This constitutes the largest dataset of open spatial data on the country’s biodiversity and a leading source of data on the current state of the national flora. About 87% of all project data, i.e. 652,285 observations, are available under free licences (CC0, CC-BY, CC-BY-NC) and can be freely used in scientific, educational and environmental activities.

The present lectotypification of the Caucasian endemic Allium saxatile M.Bieb. is found ineffective and falling outside the current concept of the species. The original collections of A. saxatile were destroyed during the Russian Civil War, and conservation of this name is suggested to avoid its lectotypification from remaining illustrations which belong to the Siberian species A. stellerianum and A. rubens. This conservation would also remove the illegitimacy of A. saxatile M.Bieb. caused by homonymy with the overlooked earlier name A. saxatile Pall. The original material of A. caucasicum is identified and discussed, and the name is typified with an illustration referable to A. globosum. Two near‐homonyms of A. caucasicum, the originally heterotypic A. caucaseum and A. caucasium are uncovered, and their identity with A. globosum is ascertained.

The paper presents new records for 39 vascular plant species from eight Eurasian countries. Aniselytron treutleri (Poaceae), Hackelochloa granularis (Poaceae), Melica kozlovii (Poaceae) and Melica nutans (Poaceae) are reported from China; Dichondra micrantha (Convolvulaceae) from Hungary; Orobanche serbica (Orobanchaceae) and Viscum album subsp. austriacum (Santalaceae) from Italy; Petrorhagia prolifera (Caryophyllaceae), Puccinellia schischkinii and Stipa pulcherrima (Poaceae) from Kyrgyzstan; Megadenia speluncarum (Brassicaceae), Phelipanche lavandulacea (Orobanchaceae), Solanum physalifolium (Solanaceae), Thymus lenensis (Lamiaceae) from Russia; Rubus phoenicolasius (Rosaceae) from Slovakia; Atraphaxis karataviensis (Polygonaceae) from Tajikistan; as well as Rubus austroslovacus and R. crispomarginatus