wcvpdata

Overview

wcvpdata provides a local R interface to the World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP), a comprehensive global database of accepted plant names and their synonyms maintained by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. This package bundles standardized snapshots of the WCVP taxonomic and geographic distribution data (Version 16, June 2026), enabling large-scale botanical research and biodiversity analysis directly in R — without requiring repeated downloads or internet access.

The WCVP database was initiated in 1988 by Rafaël Govaerts and has grown into an international collaborative programme with editors, compilers, and reviewers from around the globe.

Installation

You can install the latest development version of wcvpdata from GitHub with:

# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("PaulESantos/wcvpdata")

# From r-universe
install.packages("wcvpdata",
  repos = c(
    "https://paulesantos.r-universe.dev",
    "https://cloud.r-project.org"
  )
)

Usage

Load the library:

library(wcvpdata)

Querying the packaged data

WCVP data is stored as Zstandard-compressed Parquet files. The accessors return a lazy Arrow dataset by default, so a query reads only the columns and rows it needs:

wcvp_matching_names() |>
  dplyr::filter(genus == "Solanum") |>
  dplyr::select(plant_name_id, taxon_name, taxon_status) |>
  dplyr::collect()

Use as_data_frame = TRUE only when a materialized R object is needed. The other packaged datasets are wcvp_synonym_index(), wcvp_distribution_names(), and wcvp_distribution().

Checking the Database Version

To see what version of the WCVP database is bundled with the package:

wcvp_version()
#> Version 16 (04 Jun 2026)

You can check if the bundled version matches the latest one uploaded to the Kew SFTP server:

wcvp_check_version()
#> ✔ WCVP data is up to date.
#> ℹ Current version: Version 16 (04 Jun 2026), uploaded on "2026-06-04".

Validating Local Data Integrity

To verify that the locally installed datasets are complete and match the expected package metadata dimensions:

wcvp_validate_data()
#> ✔ Local WCVP data validation successful.
#> ℹ Names dataset: 1448984 rows, 1 column.
#> ℹ Distribution dataset: 1995338 rows, 1 column.

Citation

If you use wcvpdata, please cite the snapshot of the database you used and the paper describing WCVP.

You can find out how to cite these by running:

print(citation("wcvpdata"), bibtex=TRUE)
#> wcvpdata redistributes snapshots of the WCVP database. We, therefore,
#> encourage you to cite the snapshot version and the WCVP data paper:
#> 
#>   Govaerts R (ed.). 2026. WCVP: World Checklist of Vascular Plants.
#>   Facilitated by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
#>   https://doi.org/10.34885/egs6-cp24 [v16 accessed 04 Jun 2026].
#> 
#> A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is
#> 
#>   @Manual{,
#>     title = {WCVP: World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Facilitated by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.},
#>     author = {Rafa"{e}l Govaerts},
#>     year = {2026},
#>     note = {version 16, accessed 04 Jun 2026},
#>     doi = {10.34885/egs6-cp24},
#>   }
#> 
#> Govaerts, R., Nic Lughadha, E. et al. The World Checklist of Vascular
#> Plants, a continuously updated resource for exploring global plant
#> diversity. Sci Data 8, 215 (2021).
#> https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-021-00997-6
#> 
#> A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is
#> 
#>   @Article{,
#>     title = {The World Checklist of Vascular Plants, a continuously updated resource for exploring global plant diversity},
#>     author = {Rafa"{e}l Govaerts and Eimear Nic Lughadha and Nicholas Black and Robert Turner and Alan Paton},
#>     journal = {Scientific Data},
#>     year = {2021},
#>     volume = {8},
#>     number = {215},
#>     doi = {10.1038/s41597-021-00997-6},
#>   }