Israel is a meeting area of plant geographical regions and has high climatic, lithologic, and edapnic diversity. These factors together with prolonged influence of human activity have led to the development of a rich flora and diverse vegetation. Eig (1931-1932, 1946) has established the foundations or the botanical research in Israel. The history of geobotanical and floristic research until thc 1970's was reviewed by Zohary (1962, 1973). The basic taxonomic research on thc country's flora, "Flora palaestina", was completed in 1986 (Zohary 1966, 1972; Feinbrun-Dothan 1978, 1986). Recently, a new "Analytical Flora" was published (Feinbrun-Dothan & Danin 1991). In the last two decades many Ph.D. and M.Se. theses were carricd out. Many of these theses were written in Hebrew and are not accessiblc to those who do not read this language. The vegetation of parts of thc Galilee was studied by Rabinovitch (1970, 1979), and Berliner (1971); that of Mt. Hermon by Shmida (1977a); that of the Judean foothills by Sapir (1977); and that of the southern Negev by Lipkin (1971). Much of the present information was summarized in Waisel (1984). In the following chapter a generai dcscriplion or thc flora, i.e., the inventory of species with their geographical affinitics, and or thc vegctation of Israel is presented. In order to present the description of vcgctalion lO a wider audience I have avoided the use of the modern phytosociologic nomenclalure and have used thc generaI non-ranked term "plant community" to describe the principal vegctation units of the country.