Abstract

The history of the discovery of the Chilean plant world can be traced back to the Magallanes voyage around the globe. Since then dozens of naturalists and botanists contributed to build the corpus of the geobotanical knowledge of the country. According to most recent updates, the Chilean flora is composed of 56 orders, 171 families, 837 genera, and about 4,295 species. This includes 4 endemic families, 84 endemic genera, and 1,936 species endemic to the Chilean continental and oceanic territory. Richest families in genera and species numbers are the Asteraceae, the Poaceae, the Fabaceae, and the Solanaceae, while the species-richest genera are Senecio, Adesmia, Viola, and Carex.