Country and 'territory' abbreviations originally followed those defined and accepted in Flora Europaea. Since the volumes of Flora Europaea have been published, due changes were introduced to cope with the political actions resulted in many new countries emerged when the former Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and the USSR dissolved.

The territories accepted in Atlas Florae Europaeae are intended for scientific purposes only (in particular, for mapping of distribution of plant taxa) and for promoting effective communication and collaboration of partner institutions and/or individuals. The boundaries of these geographical units may or may not coincide with state or administrative borders, and the names of these units may or may not coincide with names of countries. The geographical units accepted here are not intended and should not be interpreted as an endorsement and/or support of any political actions, views or statements, or as violation of international treaties and/or national legislation of the participating or other countries.

Both presently used (vol. 15) and abandoned territory designations are listed here. The designations which are not in use any more are given in square brackets, and explanations on their former use and present-day equivalents are provided. Alternative or historical names, from which the relevant designations are derived, are given in Italics.

Click on territory abbreviations to see territory maps based on Google Earth and Google Maps. The AFE grid system for particular countries and mapping territories, as well as for first-level administrative territories within the Russian Federation, is developed by Raino Lampinen and available from his webpages. These pages also have tools for coordinators to help assigning the records to a certain AFE grid cell.