List plant families indexed by theplantlist.org

tpl_families.R

tpl_families <- function () {
  require(RCurl)
  require(XML)
  temp <- getURL('http://www.theplantlist.org/browse/-/')
  temp <- htmlParse(temp)
  families <- xpathSApply(temp, "//ul[@id='nametree']//a", xmlValue)
  groups <- factor(basename(dirname(xpathSApply(temp, 
                                                "//ul[@id='nametree']//a", 
                                                xmlGetAttr, 'href'))),
                   levels=c('A', 'B', 'G', 'P'),
                   labels=c('Angiosperms', 'Bryophytes', 
                            'Gymnosperms', 'Pteridophytes'))
  data.frame(group=groups, family=families)
}