The Catalogue of the Vascular Plants of Ecuador was published 30 July 1999 and is available in book form through the Missouri Botanical Garden Press. The Internet version of the Catalogue of Vascular Plants of Ecuador (W³CEC) is organized so that each botanical name has its own page that is linked to other pages. The Catalogue is designed to give users an overview of the plant species found in Ecuador and allows them to easily navigate and browse the information currently available. You may search the Catalogue for any scientific accepted name or from an index of accepted names, family names or all names (including synonyms). Each page is assembled from the data in the Catalogue's production database on demand defined through user queries. Each web page thus represents the latest up-to-date information. Links are provided to images, voucher specimens, maps, and synonyms. Further, links are made to other projects on the Missouri Botanical Garden's website as Catalogue of Peru, Flora Mesoamericana, Checklist of Panama, and W³TROPICOS. Any part of W³CEC may be updated at anytime as new and more up-to-date information becomes available. We appreciate being notified about errors and will make every effort to correct and amend the database as soon as possible. The Catalogue contains data on place of publication and typification, synonymy (as established by the contributors), a list of pertinent references, the habit of the species, the region(s) in which it occurs, its elevational distribution, political distribution, a representative specimen, and a list of infraspecific taxa if such were accepted.

Examples of names are: Passiflora, Psychotria viridis, and Macleania floribunda. The names may be reduced to significant characters, e.g., Macleania f will return M. farinosa (the first species starting with "f") while Macleania fl will return M. floribunda.