Outline of the classified system of the Chinese Leguminosae

The family Leguminosae (Fabaceae), the largest one of flowering plants after the Compositae (or Asteraceae) and Orchidaceae, consist of three subfamilies such as Caesalpinioideae, Mimosoideae and Papilionoideae. It comprises 42 tribes, 635 genera and 17 840 species in the world based on the present up-to-date statistic. In China, there are 33 tribes, 169 genera, 1 518 species, 15 subspecies, 167 varieties and 41 forms recorded so far. Of them, 158 exotic species (containing subspecies and varieties) are included, which belong to the 73 genera \. For constituting a database of Chinese Legume, the outline for classified system of Chinese Leguminosae is summarized here. This paper aims to indicate the system of Chinese Leguminosae with some new taxonomical treatment (the tribes Wisterieae X. Y. Zhu \and Poiretieae (Burkart) H. Ohashi \) based on the previous system proposed by Polhill Raven Polhill \. The number of species and geographical distribution for each genus is shown in this paper. Of them, black letters and numbers stand for the genera and species appearing in China \.