This book represents the most comprehensive compilation of data on threatened vascular plants ever published. It includes the names of some 33,000 plant species determined to be rare or threatened on a global scale. Conservation assessments were provided by the IUCN Species Survival Commission, the National Botanical Institute (South Africa), Environment Australia, and CSIRO, The Nature Conservancy, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, together with hundreds of botanic gardens and botanists throughout the world. The Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh and the New York Botanical Garden have made major in-kind contributions.The result of 20 years work by botanists and conservationists around the world, it is intended as a conservation tool, a provider of baseline information to measure conservation progress and as a primary source of data on plant species. Most importantly, however, it provides the building blocks on which to base a worldwide effort to conserve plant species.

The 1994 IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals was a major advance on its predecessors in clarity of layout and amount of information presented. This is taken further in the 1996 edition, which is also the first global compilation to use the complete new IUCN Red List category system.

The WCMC Threatened Plants Database currently contains data on more than 140,000 plant names, linked to over 190,000 distribution areas. This information originates from and is linked to over 19,000 data sources. These include national red lists, input from members of IUCN Species Survival Commission plant groups and a wide range of published and unpublished literature. A searchable subset of records from both the Threatened Plants Database and the 1997 IUCN Red List of Threatend Plants is provided.

Applies Red List data to calculate a Red List Index.