The checklist of vascular plants in İstanbul

With over 15 million inhabitants, Istanbul is Turkey's largest metropolis and the financial development center of the country. Due to its geographical location between two continents and two seas, its topography and geological structure, it is home to an extraordinary biodiversity and floral richness. The city, which has significant potential in terms of biodiversity and diversity of natural habitats due to its location at the transition point between Central European and Mediterranean climate regimes, has a floristic richness that competes with countries. In this study, it was aimed to compile the studies on the plants of Istanbul in the literature and to create a vascular plant list of the province and thus to show the herbal richness of the province. As a result of the study, a total of 2.551 vascular plant taxa belonging to 135 families at species and subspecies level were identified in Istanbul. 81 of the 2.551 plant taxa are endemic plants. While 70 of these 81 endemic plants are endemics of Turkey, 11 of them are local endemics found only in Istanbul. Of the plant taxa distributed in the province, 17 are protected under the BERN Convention Appendix-I and 108 are protected under the CITES Convention Appendix-II. Furthermore, the IUCN threat categories of the taxa show that 2 plant taxa are CR (critically endangered), 6 plant taxa are EN (endangered), 6 plant taxa are VU (vulnerable), 16 plant taxa are NT (near threatened), 660 plant taxa are LC (least concern), 40 plant taxa are DD (data deficient) and the remaining 1.821 plant taxa are NE (not evaluated).