Families of Vascular Plants and their Abbreviations

These abbreviations for families of vascular plants are taken from William A. Weber’s 1982 article "Mnemonic Three-Letter Acronyms for the Families of Vascular Plants: A Device for more Effective Herbarium Curation," (Taxon 31: 74-88). This list has been supplemented with names from The Royal Botanic Garden at Kew’s "Vascular Plants Families and Genera" list, available on the Kew website. Since the Kew list does not provide abbreviations, novel abbreviations were created for all families listed by Kew but not by Weber. These abbreviations are marked with an asterisk. To see a list of genera within a family, go to the Kew link above and click on the family name.

In February 2000, a supplement to Weber's list was published (Snow, Neil and Nathan Holton. Additions to Weber's Three-Letter Family Acronyms base on results of The Angiosperm Phylogeny Group. Taxon 49: 77-78.) Names taken from this list are indicated by a double asterisk following the abbreviation.

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