In its decision X/17, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) adopted a consolidated update of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) for the decade 2011–2020 at its 10^th Conference of the Parties held in Nagoya, Japan in October 2010. The updated GSPC includes five objectives and 16 targets to be achieved by 2020. Target 1 aims to complete the ambitious target of “an online flora of all known plants” by 2020, which is now the World Flora Online (WFO) project. A widely accessible Flora of all known plant species is a fundamental requirement for plant conservation and provides a baseline for the achievement and monitoring of other targets of the Strategy. A WFO partnership has been formed with thirty four participating institutions world-wide and an information portal online at http://www.worldfloraonline.org. The structure of the WFO will be a framework capable of accommodating regional floristic information (at national or lower level) as well as monographic information. Merging descriptive records for an estimated 400,000 species from multiple global data sources, aligning them with consistent taxonomic data, and enabling ongoing enhancements presents a significant technical challenge. A global consensus WFO Taxonomic Backbone curated by networks of plant taxonomic experts will provide the alignment.  Globally Unique Identifiers (GUID) will be utilized for the Taxonomic Backbone which will include accepted names with synonyms for all vascular plants and bryophytes at ranks from order to subspecies. Partners in the WFO project will contribute taxonomic and descriptive datasets that must be resolved and aligned to the WFO GUIDs. This presentation will discuss the challenges, discoveries and progress toward creating a Taxonomic Backbone and integrating plant taxonomic and digital floristic data using name resolution and digital identifiers.