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The most recent guide to Virginia’s plant life is Flora Virginica, published in the mid-1700s and based on plants collected and catalogued by Virginia botanist John Clayton. Without a modern flora, characterization of the state’s plant habitats is difficult, requiring familiarity with the literature and frequent contact with the community of regional botanists.

Here’s how Virginia botanists have made do all these years.

The Virginia Academy of Science was founded in 1923 and formalized the goal of a modern flora only three years later, establishing a Committee on Flora (now called the Virginia Flora Committee). In 1928, the VAS met at the College of William and Mary; have a look.

• The VAS was instrumental in the publication of the Flora of Richmond and Vicinity (1931) and supported publication, in 1977, of the first Atlas of the Virginia Flora. The Committee on Flora began a newsletter called Claytonia in 1934; it is no longer published. See the first issue.

People interested in Virginia’s plant life have had to rely on floras of the continent, region, or other states, yet they don’t fill the bill.

• The Flora of North America, being published a volume at a time by Oxford Press, is for experts and not appropriate for students or amateurs. Fifteen volumes have been completed, with 15 more planned or in production.

Two key regional works comprise Virginia plants:

• Gray’s Manual of Botany (eighth edition, 1950), by Merritt Lyndon Fernald
• Manual of Vascular Plants of Northeastern United States and Adjacent Canada (second edition, 1991), by Henry A. Gleason and Arthur Cronquist. A companion volume of illustrations was published in 1999.

Several states in our region have floras or plant guides, but none cover all of Virginia’s plants:

• Woody Plants of Maryland (1977) and Herbaceous Plants of Maryland (1983), both by Melvin L. Brown and Russell G. Brown
• The Manual of the Vascular Flora of the Carolinas (1968), by Albert E. Radford, Harry E. Ahles, and C. Ritchie Bell
• Flora of West Virginia (1978), by P.D. Strausbaugh and Earl Core.
• The Plants of Pennsylvania (2000), by Anne Fowler Rhoads and Timothy A. Block
• Plant Life of Kentucky (2005), by Ronald L. Jones

Two other works deserve mention:

• Flora of the Carolinas, Virginia, Georgia, Northern Florida, and Surrounding Areas is an online flora by Alan Weakley, a co-author of the Flora of Virginia. Its identification keys are useful, but it lacks descriptions and illustrations and doesn’t give Virginia-specific information on species status and habitat.

• The Atlas of the Virginia Flora provides range maps of Virginia’s plant species. With three editions out of print, a fourth has been published online as the Digital Atlas of the Virginia Flora