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 an...