The Tela Botanica network was created with the aim of supporting the renewal of botany in the French-speaking world, in the context of the protection of the planet's resources and the need for their sustainable exploitation.

Its founding members include three legal entities (the Société botanique de France, the botanical review La Garance voyageuse and the association ACEMAV) and the initiator of the project is Daniel Mathieu.

Its operation is based on two essential choices: All software and applications developed under the network are licensed under CeCILL.

Registration is done online from the Internet and a global mapping system can view the location of the 15,000 registered (as of June 8, 2011) of the network in more than 60 countries.

[4] An important but unquantified part comes from the volunteering of the members, who have opportunities for expression, collaborative work and proposal in the forums and other advisory tools and databases and photos put in place by the network (eFlore, Online Notebook, newsletter ...).