On a publié des catalogues des flores locales, mais tous [les] riches matéiaux étaient épars, sans liaison entr'eux, souvent difficiles à consulter; il était [donc] indispensable de les reunir, de les comparer, de les relier ensemble, et c'est le travail que j'aborde aujourd'hui.

The methodological basis of the work on the Flora URSS was the morphological–geographical method, the concept of the race as an actual biogeographical unit. That [this method] was generally adopted … is by no means fortuitous. Those who live and work in the USSR … cannot but think in terms of geography … This ideological trend and the progressive character of the Flora URSS are frequently ignored, and are possibly not sufficiently well understood by foreign botanists.

For me, the genesis of any Flora is always an interesting topic … The genesis of [the Flora of Turkey, Flora Iranica and Flora of Pakistan are] particularly so in that all of them owe their inception and development to an individual – not to a government, or an institute or an advisory committee.