The Kurdistan Flora, how rich is it

Dr. Ihsan Al-Shehbaz, senior scientists at the Missouri Botanical Garden and one of the founding members of the Kurdistan Botanical Foundation (KBF), visited Kurdistan Iraq for six weeks that ended on 14 July 2018. He conducted fieldwork, research, and teaching in Sulaimani, as well as gave a seminar at AUIS entitled "The Kurdistan Flora, how rich is it." The talk was designed to the general public, as well as scholars from various universities and institutes.

After a brief introduction on various floras of SW Asia, the talk focused on the KBF, its extensive field research, publications, and the numerous species discoveries new to science and Iraq.

The second half of the talk surveyed the flora of Greater Kurdistan, especially on families such as mustard family or Brassicaceae (on which Dr. Al-Shehbaz is considered the ranking world authority), sunflower family (Asteraceae or Compositae), the bean family (Fabaceae or Leguminosae) focusing on its largest genus Astragalus, pink family (Caryophyllaceae) and its largest genus in the area Silene, and the borage family (Boraginaceae) genus Onosma.

Kurdistan of Syria was not included because no recent flora with cited specimens is available. The conclusion reached in that presentation was that the Greater Kurdistan has more species than those of Iran, Iraq, and Turkey individually, and that a conservative estimated species number of the Kurdistan flora is more than 10,000 and likely between 12-16,000 species. Ongoing research in this field would provide more accurate figures on how rich the flora of Greater Kurdistan is. The talk was followed by stimulating discussions.