Vascular plant occurrence records from 316 uninhabited islands of the Yeosu Archipelago, South Korea (2023–2024)

Island ecosystems serve as refugia for endemic and rare species and are of considerable importance for biodiversity conservation. Nevertheless, physical limitations in accessibility have resulted in substantially underrepresented biodiversity data from island habitats compared with those from mainland areas. Yeosu City, Jeollanam-do Province, is located approximately 280 km south of Seoul, South Korea, and encompasses an archipelago of more than 316 uninhabited islands of varying sizes (34.00–34.88°N, 127.21–127.90°E). Although this region represents a major distribution centre for warm-temperate flora, no systematically compiled and openly accessible vascular plant occurrence dataset was available prior to the present study. Here, we present a georeferenced vascular plant occurrence dataset collected through field surveys of all uninhabited islands in the Yeosu Archipelago, structured according to international biodiversity data standards. This dataset comprises vascular plant occurrence records collected during field surveys of all 316 uninhabited islands in Yeosu City from May 2023 to July 2024 and organised according to the Darwin Core (DwC) standard. The dataset contains 10,040 occurrence records documenting 360 taxa (330 species, 23 varieties, 5 subspecies, and 2 forms) belonging to 89 families and 243 genera across 188 islands. Based on establishment status, 327 taxa (90.8%) are native and 33 (9.2%) are introduced, including 24 naturalised and 9 cultivated taxa. No vascular plants were recorded on the remaining 128 islands. All scientific names were verified against the Korea Plant Names Index (KPNI; Korea National Arboretum). The dataset is openly accessible in DwC Archive format through GBIF (https://doi.org/10.15468/gjg425).