Generic endemism in South-West Asia: an overview

A provisional list of all the endemic vascular plant genera in sw asia is presented. the area, here defined to include turkey, the caucasus, n iraq, iran, afghanistan and adjacent parts of pakistan and central asia, has 161 genera restricted to it. by far, the greatest numbers of the endemic genera are in apiaceae, brassicaceae and asteraceae; many are morphologically isolated and occur at random throughout the area. non-endemic genera with relevant distributions in the area are also discussed, several having a major concentration in central asia/afghanistan and radiate westwards from there reaching a limit in se turkey/n iraq. also in these and other non-endemic genera, there are many species confined to the west (turkey) or the east (afghanistan) but very few are distributed throughout. the paper attempts to provide a framework for future research. it draws attention to the need for a more precise terminology in discussing phytochoria and questions the validity of many currently widely used terms including irano-turanian