Botany Related Websites

Atlas of Medicinal Plants by Daniel Haake
Each entry in the atlas supplies a picture of the plant, as well as it links to other sources that discuss the health benefits of the plant, such as PubMed and others. Browse in English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish.



eFloras
Access to a series of flora, tree and moss databases for China, North America, Pakistan, and the Andes of Ecuador.


International Association of Plant Taxonomy: Generic Names in Current Use
"Fill in the empty field in order to query the database for a specific genus name."


International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (Tokyo Code) Electronic Version
"The Tokyo Code is different from the Berlin Code. There are two reasons for this difference: one relates to the arrangement of the book and other technical matters, the other to its content."



American Journal of Botany
Peer reviewed research; UW restricted.


American Society of Plant Taxonomists


Annals of Botany
Peer reviewed research; UW restricted.


Aquatic, Wetland and Invasive Plant Common Name List
"Center for Aquatic and Invasive Plants is a multi-disciplinary research, teaching and extension unit devoted to the study and management of freshwater aquatic plants and invasive plants, aquatic and terrestrial. Personnel from about a dozen university departments contribute to its programs and projects."



Biodiversity Information Standards
A not-for-profit association whose stated mission is "to provide an international forum for biological data projects; to develop and promote the use of standards; and to facilitate data exchange."


Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG)
An international non-profit group that develops standards and protocols for sharing biodiversity data, the site includes standards documentation, databases of biodiversity projects and networks, plus a wiki for collaborating on information sharing.


Biodiversity International's New World Fruits Database
"The New World Fruits Database aims at providing easier access to some basic, but often difficult to obtain, information on fruits from the New World (North and South America). Key information provided includes data on nomenclature, taxonomic and vernacular, on fruit and plant uses and on distribution and origin. Links are provided to additional information, such as experts working on the different species, references and URLs, making the database a useful starting point in a search for more information on the selected species."


Botanical Explorations in the United States and Canada [Bibliography]
A professor emeritus whose research specialty is botany in North America recommends a series of technical sources relating to North American sites.


Botanical Society of America


Botany Internet Directory
From the Finnish Museum of Natural History, some 4000 botany related links will be especially useful for finding taxonomic lists, international plant organizations, and specialized botanical resources.



Canadian Journal of Botany
Peer reviewed research; UW restricted.


Checklist of Online Vegetation and Plant Distribution Maps
This site organizes links to maps by continent, and then by country or region.


Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species
The species database allows you to gather information about species CITES qualifies as endangered. You can combine country of origin with phylum, class, order, family, genus, species, or common name. Choose a listed plant for detailed information, such as its habitat distribution and legal status, to name a few.


Dave’s Garden, PlantFiles
Database with information about plants, including comments from gardeners


Dictionary of Common Names
Translates between botanical and common names.



Distribution of Vascular Plants in Europe (Atlas Flora Europea)
"The principal aim of the AFE is to offer complementary maps with taxonomic notes of species and subspecies for the Flora Europaea." The data are chorological.


Environmental and Experimental Botany
Peer reviewed research; UW restricted.


Flora of North America
FNA's mission statement reads: "FLORA of North America (FNA) is a project undertaken by North American botanists to provide authoritative, up-to-date information on the names, relationships, characteristics, and distributions of the approximately 21,000 species of plants that grow outside of cultivation in North America north of Mexico." This extensive database of North American plants is organized by family, then down the line by genus and species. The information provided includes a detailed botanical description, citations to selected references, line-drawing images, which can be enlarged to positively identify the plant, and relevant links.


Flowering Plant Gateway
"Provides various paths for exploration or comparison of four systems of flowering plant classification."


GardenWeb Glossary
"The GardenWeb Glossary of Botanical Terms currently contains 4400 terms relating to botany, gardening, horticulture and landscape architecture and is regularly updated."



Gesneriaceae Research and World Checklist
Developed by researchers at the Botany Department of the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institute, this web site includes two databases relating to bibliographic references and taxonomic citations of the Gesneriad family.


Grass Manual on the Web
Compiled and hosted by the Utah State University, this online manual includes illustrations, North American distribution maps, images and botanical descriptions for many hundred species of grasses.


GRIN Taxonomy for Plants
"In GRIN Taxonomy all families and genera of vascular plants and over 40,000 species from throughout the world are represented, especially economic plants and their relatives. Information on scientific and common names, classification, distribution, references, and economic impacts are provided."


Hortiplex Plant Database
Plant images and data as well as links to information and sources


IDC Publishers
Microform reproductions of primary and archival materials in botany and herbaria.


Index Nominum Supragenericorum Plantarum Vascularium
"A joint effort between the International Association for Plant Taxonomy, the University of Maryland and Cornell University. The purpose of the project is to capture all valid and legitimate extant vascular plants names, as defined by the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature, proposed above the rank of genus. These data are dynamic and constantly being updated. At any one time, the listing of a name means only that it is the earliest, valid place of publication found."



Integrated Taxonomic Information System
An easy to use database for discovering and viewing the complete taxonomy of any given plant or animal in a hierarchical format.


International Organization for Plant Information Global Plant Checklist
"Managed by the International Organization for Plant Information (IOPI), the Global Plant Checklist (GPC) is a cooperative international project designed to help humanity manage the earth's biodiversity efficiently and sustainably. This prototype for IOPI's Global Plant Checklist Project demonstrates how the Checklist works, and serves as an aid for developing data entry and botanical editing procedures."


International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources Red List of Threatened Species
"The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species provides taxonomic, conservation status and distribution information on taxa that have been globally evaluated using the IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria. This system is designed to determine the relative risk of extinction, and the main purpose of the IUCN Red List is to catalogue and highlight those taxa that are facing a higher risk of global extinction (i.e. those listed as Critically Endangered, Endangered and Vulnerable)." Records include classification, assessment information, geographic distribution, summary documentation, detailed documentation and data sources. Advanced searching allows for limiting by region, country, marine region, or biome. Records do not contain images, but the site does refer visitors to a list of links organized by organism (i.e. mammals, fish, birds, plants).


ISHS Commission Nomenclature and Cultivar Registration
Information on how to name a new plant cultivar and a directory of organizations holding the authority to register new cultivars.


James Reveal's Concordance of Angiosperm Family Names
An index of plant family names and their alternative names as suggested by leading taxonomists.



John Davidson — The Legacy of a Canadian Botanist
A Canadian botanist, educator and conservationist active in the Northwest, Davidson's legacy is collected in this extensive digitized archive. Interactive activities include "hand" tinting glass slides and a virtual shopping trip for a 1926 expedition.
Botany--Pacific Northwest -->


Journal of Experimental Botany
Peer reviewed research; UW restricted.


Koeltz Scientific Books
Academic publications on botany and zoology


Learning to Identify Plants by Families
An article that introduces you to the basic patterns of identification for seven of the largest and easiest-to-recognize families of plants, which are found worldwide.


Missouri Botanic Garden's TROPICOS Databases
"All of the nomenclatural, bibliographic, and specimen data accumulated in MBG’s electronic databases during the past 25 years are publicly available here. This system has over one million scientific names, 3.4 million specimen records, 111,000 bibliographic citations, and more than 70,000 images of living plants and specimens."



Missouri Botanical Garden Press
Publishes quarterly journals and monographic series relating to botanic research


New Ornamentals Database
Reference source for the newest ornamental plants not typically referenced elsewhere. Basic subscription cost starts at $39.00 per year.


Northwest Garden History Homepage
Two-Hundred Years of People, Plants, and Gardens in British Columbia, Oregon, and Washington. Now includes the new Heritage Plants page.
Botany--Pacific Northwest -->


Online Botany Guide: Plant Families
A site that helps you learn about plant patterns by grouping the flowering plants taxonomically into their families.


Oregon Plant Atlas
The Oregon Flora Project and the Native Plant Society of Oregon have teamed up to create this plant altas. The interactive mapping program allows the user to create customized plant distribution maps of species and sub-species native to Oregon; the atlas shows the location where they have been observed or collected, as well as detailed information about the specimen.
Botany--Pacific Northwest -->



PhyloCode: A Phylogenetic Code of Biological Nomenclature
"The PhyloCode is a formal set of rules governing phylogenetic nomenclature. It is designed to name the parts of the tree of life by explicit reference to phylogeny."


Plant Biology "chapter" of Dr. Kimball's Biology Pages
The continually updated, fully cross-referenced online version of a biology textbook authored by a retired professor from Harvard.


Plant Physiology Online Textbook
The companion to Plant Physiology, Fourth Edition by Lincoln Taiz and Eduardo Zeiger.


PlantExplorers.com
A site with the ambitious goal of supporting and documenting plant exploration through history and modern times. The bulk of the pages are biographies of the more famous plant hunters of the last few centuries.



PLANTS Database
This USDA sponsored site is maintained by the Natural Resources Conservation Service. Their mission is to provide: "a single source of standardized information about plants. This database focuses on vascular plants, mosses, liverworts, hornworts, and lichens of the U.S. and its territories. The PLANTS Database includes names, checklists, automated tools, identification information, species abstracts, distributional data,crop information, plant symbols, plant growth data, plant materials information, plant links,references, and other plant information."


Plants of Washington Identification Key
Help for identifying plants, trees and lichens of Washington. This simple random access key can help you identify an unknown plant by narrowing the number of species that could possibly match your plant.
Botany--Washington -->


RHS Plant Finder
The RHS Plant Finder, is the standard bearer of the plant source genre published by the Royal Horticultural Society in Britain. Considered an authority for nomenclature, the Plant Finder also relates additional information such as if a plant won an award, has doubled flowers or which classification the plant belongs to within its type (e.g. a damask rose is designated with a "D"). Also available in print, this resource is useful simply for its reference value, even if you don't plan to start importing plants.


Royal Botanic Gardens - Kew
"The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is one of the world's leading botanic gardens, holding over 1 in 8 of known plant species. The site also offers information about Kew's science and access to its databases."


Royal Botanic Gardens/Kew Databases
Databases, publications, bibliographies, catalogues and interactive keys from the leading international center of botanical research.



Species 2000
"Species 2000 has the objective of enumerating all known species of organisms on Earth (animals, plants, fungi and microbes) as the baseline dataset for studies of global biodiversity."


Summerfield Books
New, out-of-print and antiquarian books on botany, forestry and natural history


Systematic Botany
Peer reviewed research; UW restricted.


Taxonomic Literature, 2nd edition (TL-2)
The online, fully searchable version of this important and historic work documenting plant taxonomy.


The Gymnosperm Database
"The Database provides basic information on the classification, description, ecology and uses for all species and higher-ranked taxa of the gymnosperms, i.e., conifers, cycads, and their allies. You enter the taxonomic tree at the Family level and then navigate to the Genus, Species or sometimes Variety levels. At each level, information on the taxon at hand is provided, along with bibliographic citations that will take you to more detailed information about the taxon."



The International Plant Names Index
"The International Plant Names Index (IPNI) is a database of the names and associated basic bibliographical details of all seed plants. Its goal is to eliminate the need for repeated reference to primary sources for basic bibliographic information about plant names. The data are freely available and are gradually being standardized and checked."


The Kew Bibliographic Databases
A combined searching tool giving you access to three bibliographic databases: KR - The Kew Record of Taxonomic Literature, PM - Plant Micromorphology and EB - Economic Botany. Free registration allows for more search options.



The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh - Multisite Search
The data available from this page are extracted from the on-line "Living Collections" and conservation databases of multiple arboreta and botanic gardens. You can simultaneously search as many of these databases as you wish, or select only the North American sites.


The WWW Virtual Library--Botany/Plant Biology
"The WWW Virtual Library (VL) is the oldest catalogue of the Web. It is run by a loose confederation of volunteers, who compile pages of key links for particular areas in which they are expert; the VL pages are widely recognised as being amongst the highest-quality guides to particular sections of the Web." Includes categories on agriculture, gardening and botany.


Tree Species Distribution Maps for North America
Produced by the United States Geological Survey, maps of the geographic ranges of North American trees are available for download, or viewing as a PDF. The trees are arranged alphabetically by genus.


University of Washington Herbarium Database
The database system provides access to label information from specimens housed in the WTU herbarium. As one of the largest herbaria in the Pacific Northwest, WTU's total holdings number around 564,000 specimens. These are divided between collections of vascular plants, mosses, hepatics, fungi, lichens, and algae, with a focus on the Pacific Northwest region.


What Plant Family Is It?
This site contains information helpful in identifying what family a plant belongs to based on parts of flowers and arrangement of those parts. It includes a list of symbols for botanical notation and descriptions of some of the main families of plants.


Why Leaves Change Color
This frequently asked question is answered in depth by the US Forest Service.



Yahoo Botany Directory
The site acts as a portal to sites related to botany and horticulture.