New records of flowering plants for the flora of Myanmar collected from southern Shan State

Abstract

Myanmar's plant diversity is expected to be very high given the wide variety of climates and the diverse vegetation and geographical features of the country. Since the publication of Kress et al.'s plant checklist in 2003, new and unrecorded species have been constantly reported by various botanists, but much of Myanmar's flora requires more intensive examinations. We conducted joint floristic surveys of several Ywangan areas, including the Panlaung-Pyadalin Cave Wildlife Sanctuary in southern Shan State of Myanmar. The initial identification of seed plant specimens collected from three short floristic expeditions revealed that 23 species were newly recorded species in Myanmar. More than half of these were found to be geographically notable species, which are known to be endemic to neighboring countries such as China (4 spp.), Thailand (6 spp.), and India (2 spp.). A considerable number of these unrecorded species are distributed in the limestone areas of neighboring countries, reflecting the geological characteristics of the survey area. The results of this study reemphasize the need for intensive and continuous research on the flora of Myanmar for a more comprehensive understanding of the distribution patterns of flowering plants in Southeast Asia.

Contributions to the flora of Myanmar from 2000 to 2019

“…Many taxa new to science as well as many new records for Myanmar have been found (e.g. Jin et al., 2018 ; Kang et al, 2018 ; Ding et al, 2019a ; Rodda et al., 2019 ; Tanaka et al, 2019b ), and these botanical investigations have also contributed to taxonomic revisions (e.g. Ruchisansakun et al, 2018 ; Tanaka and Aung, 2019 ; Ding et al, 2019b ; Yang et al, 2019 ; Maw et al, 2020 ), checklists ( Tanaka et al., 2006 ; Khine et al, 2017 ; Hughes et al., 2019 ; Aung et al, 2020 ), and field guides ( Fujikawa et al, 2008 ; Kang et al, 2017 ; Tanaka et al, 2019a ).…”

Sixty-seven species newly recorded for the flora of Angola: recent findings from vegetation surveys and herbarium collections

“…In comparison, recent studies reporting new records in tropical regions list fewer species, e.g. 11 new records in Singapore (Lim et al 2018), 23 from Shan state in Myanmar (Kang et al 2018), or 55 from Santa Catarina, Brazil (Funez et al 2017). Those studies focus on a single region, whereas our study combines the work of several groups working in Angola, thus providing more new floristic knowledge at once.…”

Progress on Southeast Asia’s Flora projects

“…The Korean National Institute of Biological Resources has been collaborating with the Myanmar Forest Department since 2011, including biodiversity inventories in Natma Taung National Park and southern Shan State. As a result, many new records of vascular plants for Myanmar have been reported (Kang et al, 2017a(Kang et al, , 2018, and Seed Plants of Natma Taung National Park was published (Kang et al, 2017b), in which 600 species in 120 families were illustrated.…”