A dataset on inventory and geographical distributions of vascular plants in Beijing, China

An inventory of vascular plants in one region is of great significance for regional plant diversity conservation and sustainable utilization of plant resources. Beijing is the capital of China, where the inventory work has been carried out early since the 1960s, but it has not been systematically updated in the past three decades. Currently, the existing data is outdated, scattered and unsystematic, and the inventory progress has even fell behind the neighbouring areas of Beijing. Based on the inventory of vascular plants from the Flora of Beijing (1992 Revised Edition) and combined with the field survey from many years, we have composed a dataset on new inventory and geographical distributions of vascular plants in Beijing (including two sheets for native plants and introduced plants, and the data of cultivated plants, the later is incomplete currently), by supplementing with new taxa, new records and new distributions from comprehensive literatures, revising the scientific names (based on the new revision of classification), updating the classification systems (using those based on molecular data), and also adding some related information such as taxon rank, distribution status, growth status, outdoor/indoor, distribution areas, knowledge degree and conservation status. Up to December 31, 2021, the dataset has a total of 2883 data items, with 1680 items for native plants and 1203 for introduced plants. There are 134 families, 611 genera, 1597 taxa (1440 species 3 natural hybrids, 46 subspecies, 97 varieties and 11 forms) of native wild vascular plants in Beijing, and totally 3 families, 26 genera, 173 species 4 subspecies 28 varieties and 11 forms should be supplemented to the last version of Flora of Beijing. The Beijing native wild plants included in ‘National Key Protected Wild Plant List (2021)’ have only been counted for 16 species (only 1 at the first class, others all at the second class). There are also 90 species 3 subspecies and 4 varieties included in ‘Beijing Key Protected Wild Plants List (2008)’. On introduced plants, so far 137 families, 581 genera and 1184 taxa (992 species and other infraspecific taxa) are counted, including many cultivated plants (854 species 19 hybrids 15 subspecies 29 varieties 2 forms 87 cultivars 38 cultivar groups). There are still escape plants (132 species 1 subspecies ), naturalized plants (77 species 2 varieties), and invasive plants (27 species) in Beijing. The dataset shows that, on the one hand, the diversity of native wild vascular plants in Beijing is generally not very abundant, mainly dominated by widely distributed common species, and lacking endemic species, narrow-range species, or rare and endangered species; on the other hand, there are a large number of introduced plants in Beijing. Even many have long been recorded in the versions of Flora of Beijing but they are also an important part of the diversity of vascular plants in Beijing, although they also brings some confusion and uncertainty to the analysis of it due to the incomplete data.