Document India's floral biodiversity

This month's bicentenary of the birth of Joseph Dalton Hooker, one of the great botanical explorers of the nineteenth century, is a good time to highlight the urgent need to document India's

remarkable biodiversity for conservation purposes (see also J. Endersby Nature 546, 472–473; 2017).

Hooker's compilation, The Flora of British India (1872–97), was the first, and is still the most authoritative, account of flowering plants in the country, which at that time included

present-day Pakistan, Bangladesh and parts of Myanmar. Hooker corresponded with Charles Darwin on the 100 species of Himalayan Impatiens (balsams) he found (see go.nature.com/2sdxeby), new

species of which are being discovered even now.

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