Explanation

The Flora of Pakistan — the most comprehensive and authentic scientific work ever on Pakistan’s flora initiated over four decades ago — has been completed. The book has 224 volumes containing details of over 6,000 indigenous flowering species. This was announced by Prof Muhammad Qaiser, a senior botanist and former vice chancellor of Karachi University, at the inaugural ceremony of an international symposium held at KU’s Dr A.Q. Khan Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering. Titled ‘Plant Life of South Asia’, the four-day event organised by KU’s Centre of Plant Conservation and its botany department, is being attended by local and international scholars from eight countries. Sharing details of Flora of Pakistan, Prof Qaiser informed the audience that the project funded by the US department of agriculture was initially christened the Flora of West Pakistan. It was launched in 1967 in two institutions, the Gordon College Rawalpindi and KU simultaneously, as they had the best taxonomists in the country at that time. The first volume came out in 1970. Flora of Pakistan in 224 volumes completed after 44 years