Geographical Distribution
Currently, 566,954 distribution records exist in GRIN-Global for
the 61,096 taxa for which distributional data are provided. Each
record is a linkage between a continent, country, or state occurrence and
an accepted taxon name. Country designations follow standards of the U.S.
Government as implemented in GRIN-Global. GRIN-Global distribution records are grouped
into areas and regions in accordance with the standard publication
World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (Brummitt, 2001),
which divides the terrestrial world into nine areas:
Africa, Antarctic, Asia-Temperate, Asia-Tropical, Australasia, Europe,
Northern America, Pacific, and Southern America.
Distributions are given as reported in the literature or
by consulted specialists. Native or potentially native distributions are
recorded and displayed separately from cultivated, adventive, or
naturalized distributions. For weedy species this distinction is
sometimes obscure, and some widespread taxa may have their entire
distributions summarized as a comment. State
distributions for some larger countries are provided when these are available,
although sometimes these are not itemized for taxa widespread within those
countries. However, a distributional report for a taxon in a geographical
or political region does not necessarily imply widespread occurrence in
that region, but only indicates that a literature citation or other basis
exists for that report. When available, more specificity in GRIN-Global
distributional reports is given as comments, but the available information
may vary greatly from one taxon or region to another. Among regions, the
greatest gaps in information exist mainly for tropical regions.
For species with subspecies or varieties in GRIN-Global, the
main entry for the species provides the overall distribution, including
distributions for any subspecies or varieties not appearing in GRIN-Global.
Autonym entries provide distributions of only the typical subspecies or
variety which occupies all or only a portion of the total distribution for
the species.