BASECO:: a floristic and ecological database of Mediterranean French flora

The French Mediterranean zone is one of the richest of the country, with 3200 species and many endemics. Because of its interest as a synthetic tool to store and manage data, an ecological Mediterranean flora database was created. Built around five tables, BASECO allows several queries about the botanical and ecological characteristics of about 1800 plants. The database was implemented in Access, which is a relational database management system. Each species is identified by a code and is characterised by several qualitative traits relating to morphology, reproduction, life forms and biogeographical distribution, including several modalities. Each trait is informed from one or two pre-defined reference botanical handbooks as much as possible. There are many different possible uses of this database, even at a huge scale, allowing to reveal patterns hard to detect with the taxonomic approach alone.