The shortage of reliable primary taxonomic data limits the description of biological taxa and the understanding of biodiversity patterns and processes, complicating biogeographical, ecological, and evolutionary studies. This deficit creates a significant taxonomic impediment to biodiversity research and conservation planning. The taxonomic impediment and the biodiversity crisis are widely recognized, highlighting the urgent need for reliable taxonomic data. Over the past decade, numerous countries worldwide have devoted considerable effort to Target 1 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC), which called for the preparation of a working list of all known plant species by 2010 and an online world Flora by 2020. Brazil is a megadiverse country, home to more of the world's known plant species than any other country. Despite that, Flora Brasiliensis, concluded in 1906, was the last comprehensive treatment of the Brazilian flora. The lack of accurate estimates of the number of species of algae, fungi, and plants occurring in Brazil contributes to the prevailing taxonomic impediment and delays progress towards the GSPC targets. Over the past 12 years, a legion of taxonomists motivated to meet Target 1 of the GSPC, worked together to gather and integrate knowledge on the algal, plant, and fungal diversity of Brazil. Overall, a team of about 980 taxonomists joined efforts in a highly collaborative project that used cybertaxonomy to prepare an updated Flora of Brazil, showing the power of scientific collaboration to reach ambitious goals. This paper presents an overview of the Brazilian Flora 2020 and provides taxonomic and spatial updates on the algae, fungi, and plants found in one of the world's most biodiverse countries. We further identify collection gaps and summarize future goals that extend beyond 2020. Our results show that Brazil is home to 46,975 native species of algae, fungi, and plants, of which 19,669 are endemic to the country. The data compiled to date suggests that the Atlantic Rainforest might be the most diverse Brazilian domain for all plant groups except gymnosperms, which are most diverse in the Amazon. However, scientific knowledge of Brazilian diversity is still unequally distributed, with the Atlantic Rainforest and the Cerrado being the most intensively sampled and studied biomes in the country. In times of “scientific reductionism”, with botanical and mycological sciences suffering pervasive depreciation in recent decades, the first online Flora of Brazil 2020 significantly enhanced the quality and quantity of taxonomic data available for algae, fungi, and plants from Brazil. This project also made all the information freely available online, providing a firm foundation for future research and for the management, conservation, and sustainable use of the Brazilian funga and flora.

Piriqueta pampeana, a new species of Turneraceae, is described and illustrated here. The species occurs in the municipalities of Alegrete, Maçambará, Manoel Viana and São Francisco de Assis, in the western region of Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil. It resembles Piriqueta suborbicularis and Piriqueta taubatensis, but can be distinguished by the presence of a pair of discoid basilaminar nectaries, a pair of petiolar nectaries and small nectaries distributed along the leaf margin, sepals with acute apex and a yellow spot at the base of the petals. Due to the intense environmental degradation of  its habitat, and according to IUCN guidelines, we ranked the species as “Endangered” (EN).

ResumoTrês espécies de Lythraceae foram registradas para a Serra dos Carajás, Pará, Brasil: Cuphea annulata e C. carthagenensis, espécies sul-americanas de ampla distribuição e C. carajasensis endêmica das serras de Carajás. Palavras-chave: Amazônia, Cuphea, espécie endêmica, florística. AbstractThree species of Lythraceae were recorded for the cangas of the Serra dos Carajás, Pará, Brazil: Cuphea annulata, and C. carthagenensis, South American species of wide distribution and C. carajasensis, endemic to rocky outcrops of Carajás.

Recent collections of Lythraceae from an isolated mountain range in eastern Brazil were found to possess a unique morphology including spurless, weakly actinomorphic floral tubes, two deep red petals, a stipitate ovary and irregularly circumscissile dehiscence of a thickened capsule, characters typically applied to taxon recognition at the generic level. Genomic DNA was extracted from herbarium specimens or silica-dried leaf tissue and subjected to Illumina sequencing, and a phylogenetic analysis was performed based on a combination of plastid trnL-trnF and rpl16 and nuclear ribosomal ITS sequences. Sequences of 22 genera of Lythraceae, including 74 Cuphea spp. representing all recognized sections of the genus and three Pleurophora spp., were included in the analysis; Ludwigia octovalvis (Onagraceae) was used to root the trees. A maximum-likelihood tree was reconstructed based on the concatenated matrix. Strong morphological evidence was found to recognize a new genus and species in Lythraceae: Gyrosphragma latipetala sp. nov., gen. nov. The same characteristics also occur in a little-known species, Cuphea santos-limae, which we transfer to Gyrosphragma. Molecular phylogenetic analysis confirms Gyrosphragma as a monophyletic genus, sister to Cuphea; together these genera form a clade with Pleurophora. The new genus, supported by morphological and molecular evidence, adds new features and extends knowledge on the ecological and geographical diversity within Lythraceae.