The list of vascular plants for the city of Toronto

Urban areas have become epicenters for applied ecological and conservation
research and policy. Yet, most urban areas have surprisingly little
consolidated information about their biota, including species-at-risk and
invasive species. I used multiple data sources to compile a list of
vascular plants for the greater metropolitan Toronto region. This data not
only includes taxonomic information, but also global and national status
ranks, growth from, native status, threatened status, abundance estimates
and year of first observation for non-indigenous species. The list
includes 1937 taxa from 146 families, of which 822 are non-indigenous. The
majority of native species were ranked as abundant and widespread both
globally and provincially. However, non-indigenous species ranks were
bimodal, likely to be either extremely restricted in the province, or very
widespread. This database provides a robust list of plant taxa in Canada’s
largest city. It will inform global urban ecology analyses and local and
regional management and policy.