In message , P. van
Rijckevorsel writes
A mini "Frequently Asked Questions" for sci.bio.botany

This is an unmonitored ("feral") NG that is irregular in all other respects
as well, foremost in the frequency of postings. The topic is botany, in all
its aspects, but excluding topics covered in other newsgroups, such as
gardening, cooking with plants, education about plants, etc.

Frequently Asked Questions include:
Can someone ID this flower?
Can someone ID this fruit?
Can someone ID this leaf?
etc

But questions are posed in a very wide range of topics ("Is there such a
thing as a walking palm?", "I am stuck in my lab procedure for a ADP-Glucose
Pyrophosphorylase Assay, please help!", "What is the Classic Greek word for
birch?", etc). Some people think this NG knows everything there is to know
about plants! For an in-depth impression see the archives at
http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search
Many questions of a general nature can be answered by consulting the
archives or just a search engine (a frequent question is "I have this school
project. Can someone write my paper for me?" with the standard response:
"try Google" or "DAGS").

GLOSSARY & WEBDIRECTORY:

BOTANICAL NAMES:
Plantfinder at http://www.rhs.org.uk/RHSPlantFinder/plantfinder.asp
This is a directory of names of plants offered for sale in the UK. Standards
are pretty high, both as concerns correct spelling and currency of names.

A competing, but as yet small-scale plantfinder
http://www.mobot.org/gardeninghelp/p...der/Search.asp

A lively-looking site with a database of cultivated plants is at:
http://plantsdatabase.com/
This also offers pictures. It is unclear how good a standard is reached?

GRIN at http://www.ars-grin.gov/cgi-bin/npgs/html/taxecon.pl
Well-kept database of economically important plants.

TROPICOS (or W3TROPICOS) at
http://mobot.mobot.org/W3T/Search/vast.html
This is a list of current names maintained at the Missouri Botanical
Gardens. It is to be kept in mind that this is a work in progress, with
quality and coverage varying, being especially good in areas where the
Missouri Botanical Gardens is active.

IPNI at www.ipni.org, www.uk.ipni.org or www.us.ipni.org
Basically this is a list of all scientific names of vascular plants ever
published, in the form they were published. It is not complete (names below
the rank of species were indexed in only one of the component indexes, until
recently) and the names listed are not necessarily spelled correctly by
today's standards.


IPNI is incomplete in other ways. It is rather thin on the names of
hybrids. It's also missing some other names - I've found some names in
INRA's synonymy of the French Flora that weren't in IPNI, and also some
names in Adansonia.

Regional lists, usually lacking or with incomplete synonymies, are
appearing on the web - it used to be that Australia was the world
leader, but now there's a complete set for southern Africa, and I
haven't yet found a list for Queensland.

I've been updating my list of floras and checklists, and the new version
is, for the time being, at

http://www.malvaceae.info/PHPlib/Floras.php

(I'm thinking of putting a form in front of this so that the reader can
select and region of interest.)

It may be worth mentioning sources of literature, such as

Google Scholar (http://www.google.com/advanced_scholar_search)
Gallica (http://gallica.bnf.fr)
Botanicus (http://www.botanicus.org)

and perhaps some of the journals with online archives, such as
Am.J.Bot., Ann.Bot., Mol.Biol.Evol.

Something else with is happening is the creation of web sites including
herbarium catalogues, or even images of herbarium specimens.
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley