Generally

Forest Trees and Shrubs of Croatia on WEB is in the first place an electronic guide which will serve to train forestry engineers. Certainly, it will be useful also in training of forestry technicians, engineers of agronomy, pharmacists, biologists and generally all nature lovers anxious to learn something more about the plants they find around them. Furthermore, this guide indicates also inferior taxons of a species (sub-species, varieties, forms), as well as the cultivated taxons (cultivars), which provide a more complete picture of the variability and the use of the plant species. Morphology presents the basis for determining the species, but in addition to the morphological data this guide provides also the data on the distribution, habitat, biology and variability of a species.

All species in the guide are classified into two main groups - gymnosperms-conifers (Pinophyta-Pinidae) and angiosperms-dicotyledoneae (Magnoliophyta-Magnoliatae), and in each group they are classified in alphabetical order. In its final version, the guide will be adapted to the lecturer who will be able to learn in a very simple and comprehensible manner the most important features of an autochthonous woody species which can be found in the territory of Croatia.

Owing to the electronic form of presentation of color photographs, it will be possible, by means of these photographs, to see all most important parts of a woody plant species, which are necessary for the fast and correct determination. Moreover, this electronic guide is conceived in the way to enable to test one's knowledge of determination on the principle of random arrangement and selection of photographs, that basically was the objective, and as such it will be very useful to future forestry engineers in preparing their examinations in Forestry Botany, Dendrology, Forestry Phytocenology, and the like.

This guide does not deal with foreign (alochthonous) tree and shrub species, which are the subjectmatter of our next objective, where the most important and the most widespread foreign (alochthonous) tree and shrub species in Croatia will be presented in an identical way. An exception are some woody species which had been imported into Croatia a long time ago and which settled here so that now jointly with domestic (autochthonous) species they form forest associations. Another guide under preparation is the one entitled Forest Herbaceous Plants of Croatia. These three guides will cover a large number of plant species and inferior taxons, which now can be found in the territory of Croatia, that will improve considerably the situation concerning the availability of such literature in Croatia.

For this presentation, only the main woody plants of Croatia have been presented, while the Croatian autochthonous conifers are presented completely. In continuation of this project, the woody autochthonous angiosperms-dicotyledoneae will also be completed with the full presentation of all said properties.