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Botanical Links

Internet Directory for Botany - an extensive and searchable collection of links, sorted alphabetically or by subject area.

Scott's Botanical Links - an easily accessible collection of (almost) daily reviews of Web sites.

A Little Bit of Sub-Antarctica at the Bottom of the Garden - the Australian National Botanic Gardens' presentation of a modern-day plant-collecting expedition.

Kew Web - part of the Royal Botanic Gardens. This site provides an Angiosperm-DNA C-Value Database, information on the Millennium Seed Bank Project, and much more.

Flora of China - a central clearinghouse for botanical information gathered through an extensive collaboration.

Australian National Botanic Gardens

Access to Database Information
Australian Biological Resources Study
ANBG Photo Search
National Plant Photographic Index (frames version)

Australian National Herbarium
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research

Information About Some Australian Plants
Plant Collecting in Western New South Wales
Vascular Specimen Mounting Guidelines

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization
Holden Arboretum
Missouri Botanical Garden

Bryology at the Missouri Botanical Garden
Field Techniques Used by Missouri Botanical Garden
Taxonomic Treatments
TROPICOS Image Index
W3TROPICOS

New York Botanical Garden

Botanical Science Division
Herbarium Specimen Catalog
Index Herbarium
North American Gymnosperms
Macrofungi
Search
Searchable Databases

Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

Araliales Resource Centre
BG-Base
Dipterocarpaceae Data Base
Flora Europaea
Multisite Living Collections Searches
Searchable Data

For a look at some of the latest trends in online botanical-garden resources, check out the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE). RBGE's searchable data sets lead visitors to the Araliales Resource Centre, a clearinghouse of information for scientists interested in this order of flowering plants, which includes wild sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis) and the Umbelliferas (Apiaceae), carrot, and celery. The Centre provides molecular, taxonomic, and genetic resources, as well as lists of researchers and recent publications. Other databases at RBGE include the Flora Europaea and the Dipterocarpaceae Data Base, an index of specimens collected from this family of trees.

Perhaps the best resource at RBGE, at least in terms of its general usefulness, is BG-Base. This application, the result of a 15-year developmental effort, is used at over 100 locations around the world, although the RBGE and the Holden Arboretum are currently in charge of its development and support. BG-Base makes it easy for individual sites to build large relational databases and to create virtual collections online.

For an example of the power of this data-amassing tool, see Multisite Living Collections Searches at RBGE. This one search form accesses information from ten different institutions. This feature is a work in progress, and the information retrieved varies in completeness from one garden to the next. Images, it appears, have not yet been incorporated into the data, but with time, BG-Base could make searching online collections even more efficient. And the standardization of the retrieved information will make interpreting the results that much faster.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the Missouri Botanical Garden (MBG) is doing its part to put resources for botanists online. Visitors must dig a little to get to the hard-core research materials, but there is plenty to unearth at this site.

W3TROPICOS provides online access to MBG's Vascular Tropicos database. Use the main search function to look up information by species name. Alternatively, narrow your search to bibliographic records, the index of plant chromosome numbers, or one of several other options by using the drop-menu button below the pressed leaves from Ticodendrum incognitum. If you're interested in pictures, try the TROPICOS Image Index. This index contains the subset of TROPICOS entries that includes plant images. It groups entries by family or, using the Generic Alphabetical Lists option, by species name.

Other offerings from MBG's crop of research sites include Bryology at the Missouri Botanical Garden, Field Techniques Used by Missouri Botanical Garden, and Taxonomic Treatments, a collection of sites covering seven families of angiosperms.

Although the Missouri Botanical Garden excels in providing global botanical information, the Australian National Botanic Gardens (ANBG) Web site focuses its efforts on documenting the southern continent's wealth of native species. But by no means has a narrow focus translated into a small Web presence. Visitors to the ANBG's home page will immediately gain an understanding of the broad scope of this site. Along with expected information on the gardens themselves, this site includes the Australian Biological Resources Study, Access to Database Information, and more.

Many of ANBG's resources keep track of rare or threatened species. The Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research, a collaboration between ANBG and Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), documents and conserves the diversity of Australia's flora. The Australian National Herbarium, which has grown out of this collaboration, now consists of 1.3 million plant specimens.

Information About Some Australian Plants covers the eucalypts, the genus Acacia, and others. It also includes more general information for researchers, such as Vascular Specimen Mounting Guidelines and a virtual field trip called Plant Collecting in Western New South Wales, which introduces novices to a typical plant-collecting expedition.

Many botanical garden databases currently lack photos of the plants and herbarium specimens they feature. The ANBG's National Plant Photographic Index, as its name suggests, stands out in this respect. The frames version makes hunting for plants easy, if you know the family name. Otherwise, try the ANBG Photo Search. The pictures come in two sizes, small and medium. Selecting the species name brings up the medium-size photo of a live specimen.

The Brooklyn Botanic Garden might be the first New York City botanical garden to leap to mind, but the New York Botanical Garden Web site is the place to go for research-related information. The Botanical Science Division gives an overview of the New York Botanical Garden's offerings and facilitates navigation. The New York Botanical Garden's strength lies in its searchable databases. Besides providing pertinent information to researchers, they are a valuable lesson in well-designed search features.

The Herbarium Specimen Catalog provides researchers with a powerful searching tool for isolating information from this vast collection. Visitors can limit searches to specific projects, such as North American Gymnosperms or Macrofungi. Alternatively, they can search the whole collection (use the button on the Herbarium Catalog home page) using one or more of the eleven data fields. Some entries provide an image of a pressed specimen and a map indicating where it was collected.

A resource of a different type is the Index Herbariorum, which is the ultimate yellow-page listing for herbaria and their associated researchers. Visitors can use the search page to explore an index of 2,010 herbaria in 134 countries, arranged by institution, geographical region, person, or research specialty. The latter option makes it very easy to locate, for example, the world's experts in Ericaceae, the family that includes Ward's scarlet rhododendron.

People will always visit botanical gardens to see plants from all over the world. With the Web, however, these institutions can also share their collections with researchers from a wide geographical distribution. It might not compare to getting out and seeing these plants in their native environments, but improving access to valuable research materials can only be a good thing when it comes to understanding plants and preserving botanical diversity. And this way, you won't have to worry about the ticks.