In botany, flora (plural: floras or florae) has two meanings.
The first meaning refers Flowers ,Flower Goddess and plant life in an area or time period (especially the naturally occurring or indigenous plant life). The corresponding term for animal life is fauna.
The second meaning refers to a book or other work which describes the plantspecies in an area or time period, with the aim of allowing identification.
Plants are grouped into floras based on region, period, special environment, or climate. Regions can be geographically distinct habitats like mountain vs. flatland. Floras can mean plant life of an historic era as in fossil flora.
Bacterial organisms are sometimes included in a flora [1]Archived 2006-04-30 at the Wayback Machine[2]Archived 2007-07-15 at the Wayback Machine. Other times, the terms bacterial flora and plant flora are used separately.
Floras (in the second sense)
Classic floras
Europe
Flora Londinensis, William Curtis. England 1777- 1798
Flora Graeca, John Sibthorp. (England) 1806 - 1840
Hortus indicus malabaricus, Hendrik van Rheede 1683–1703
Indonesia
Flora Javae, Carl Ludwig Blume and Joanne Baptista Fischer. 1828.
Modern floras
Americas
Caribbean
Britton, N. L., and Percy Wilson. Scientific Survey of Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands — Volume V, Part 1: Botany of Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands: Pandanales to Thymeleales. New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1924.
Nathaniel Lord Britton and Hon. Addison Brown. An Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States and Canada. In three volumes. Dover Publications, 1913, 1970. ISBN0-486-22642-5