Websites
BOTANY & PLANT SCIENCE
www.aspb.org American Society of Plant Biologists is: “a professional society devoted to the advancement of the plant sciences. It publishes two world-class journals and organizes conferences, and other activities that are key to the advancement of the science.” (quote from the website) Check out Awards, Past Awardees pages…..
www.nasonline.org “The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a private, non-profit society of distinguished scholars. Established by an Act of Congress, signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, the NAS is charged with providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology. Scientists are elected by their peers to membership in the NAS for outstanding contributions to research. The NAS is committed to furthering science in America, and its members are active contributors to the international scientific community. Nearly 500 members of the NAS have won Nobel Prizes, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, founded in 1914, is today one of the premier international journals publishing the results of original research.” (quoted from the website) For information on significant scientists of North America, see the In Memorium pages
www.aspt.net The American Society of Plant Taxonomists publishes the journal Systematic Botany, as well as a series of monographs. Annual awards are announced.
www.apsnet.org The American Phytopathological Society “will be a diverse global community of scientists that: provides credible and beneficial information related to plant health; advocates and participates in the exchange of knowledge with the public, policy makers, and the larger scientific community; and promotes and provides opportunities for scientific communication, career preparation, and professional development for its members.” (mission statement from the website)
www.thequietbranches.com Compiled and to a great extent written by Ian Street, The Quiet Branches gives access to writing about plants and plant science, through posting blogs as well as providing links to other blogs on plants.
http://dept.ca.uky.edu/PLS220/Initialmainpage.pdf
Introduction to Plant Identification was a nice website compiled by Dr. Robert Geneve, who teaches in the Department of Horticulture at the University of Kentucky. The various pdfs included illustrations of terms and concepts, but the link now fails.
“The ACSESS Digital Library is a complete collection of all con- tent published by the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America.
The Digital Library makes it possible to search, browse, research, comment on, and share all of our published literature in one convenient place.”
https://www.ou.edu/cas/botany-micro/www-vl/
The Virtual Library of Botany/Plant Biology: “The WWW Virtual Library (VL) is the oldest catalogue of the Web. It was started by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of HTML and of the Web itself, in 1991 at CERN in Geneva. (World-Wide Web Vir- tual Library: Botany/Plant Sciences (Biosciences))
http://www.e-journals.org/botany/
“Electronic Sites of Botany, Plant Biology and Plant Science Journals. These are links to journals in which articles concern- ing plant biology are published. The sites will almost always have a Tables of Contents available free and may frequently have selected articles, or the entire text online. Some sites are free; others require registration or paid subscriptions. Many journals have free “trial” periods, or bundle online with print subscriptions, so check the site to test availability. All journals are not created equal; the web site provides links but makes no claims as to the quality or suitability of the sites listed.” (The Virtual Library of Botany/Plant Biology, February, 2018). This is an absolutely fabulous list of links to 1,316 plant-related journals.
https://www.anbg.gov.au/bot-biog/bot-biog-A.html
Posted in the website of the Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria, the Australian government supports a list of plant collectors and their biographies.
PLANT DISTRIBUTION & IDENTIFICATION
https://plants.usda.gov/about_plants.html
“The PLANTS Database provides standardized information about the vascular plants, mosses, liverworts, hornworts, and lichens of the U.S. and its territories. It includes names, plant symbols, checklists, distributional data, species abstracts, characteristics, images, crop information, automated tools, onward Web links, and references. This information primarily promotes land conservation in the United States and its terri- tories, but academic, educational, and general use is encouraged. PLANTS reduces government spending by minimizing duplication and making information exchange possible across agencies and disciplines.
PLANTS is a collaborative effort of the USDA NRCS National Plant Data Team (NPDT), the USDA NRCS Information Tech- nology Center (ITC), The USDA National Information Technol- ogy Center (NITC), and many other partners. Much of the PLANTS data and design is developed at NPDT, and the Web application is programmed at ITC and NITC and served through the USDA Web Farm. Here’s more information about who does what on the PLANTS Team, our Partners, and our Data Contributors.”
www.tropicos.org A database provided by Missouri Botanical Garden, documenting their collections. Copied from their website: “Tropicos® was originally created for internal research but has since been made available to the world’s scientific community. All of the nomenclatural, bibliographic, and specimen data accumulated in MBG’s electronic databases during the past 30 years are publicly available here. This system has nearly 1.3 million scientific names and over 4.4 million specimen records.”
www.calflora.org“Calflora is both a website you can use to learn about plants that grow wild in California (both native plants and weeds) and a nonprofit organization responsible for providing this service. Calflora is run by the team described above. Information in Calflora comes from many sources: public agencies, non-profits, scientists, private donors, and you!” (quote from website)
www.bgci.org Botanical Gardens Conservation International addresses the collective need for botanical gardens to work together for conservation of plant biodiversity. On the home page, you can access their databases on plants (PlantSearch) and gardens (GardenSearch).
http://dept.ca.uky.edu/PLS220/Initialmainpage.pdf This site was, constructed by Dr. Robert Geneve at The University of Kentucky, was disabled recently. I hope Dr. Geneve is able to re-post it, since he presents a range of information concerning plant taxonomy and botanical history. You might check to see if he has been successful.
http://nickrentlab.siu.edu/BotImages.html
A list that formerly existed of scores of topical websites that provide plant images. Hosted on the Southern Illinois University website. (last updated in 2016) Have to search to determine if there is a new URL.
EDUCATION: NATURE, AGRICULTURE, SCIENCE
www.nature.com – the Nature Education Knowledge Project. Nature, a long-running and prominent science journal, hosts educational information on its website. This includes the capacity for educators to publish e-books as references for teachers and students through Scitable. For one example, see: History of Agricultural Biotechnology: How Crop De- velopment has Evolved (2012 Nature Education: Wieczorek, Ania & Wright,Mark)
www.agclassroom.org “The mission of Agriculture in the Classroom is to “increase agricultural literacy through K-12 education.” An agriculturally literate person is defined as “one who understands and can communicate the source and value of agriculture as it affects our quality of life.” (quote from their website) See: Growing A Nation, The Story of American Agriculture.
www.teachers.net Sign up and search this website for ac- tivities and curricular ideas. Many teachers communicate and collaborate through this resource. Contributions are not reviewed, so be certain that concepts and content align with other resources.
www.rsc.org – the Royal Society of Chemists. The RSC publishes a journal on Education in Chemistry, which features topics and useful hands-on demonstrations/experiments. For example, look up “Chirality in Sugars” in their website: Home>Education>Education in Chemistry>Issues>2012 January.
www.plantphys.info – Plant Physiology Information Web- site, Developed by Ross E. Koning, Eastern Connecticut State University. Check out his online CV for articles on Botanical education (listed at the end, under Research Experience)
http://employees.csbsju.edu/SSAUPE/essays-hp.htm
- Stephen G. Saupe, Botanist at St. Benedict/St. John’s Univer- sity maintains a website of lessons, lore, and literary thoughts concerning plants. The site includes notes and even quizzes for college students concerning many topics.
Science and Plants for Schools: “About us: Science and Plants for Schools (SAPS) creates opportunities for teachers and students to find out more about plants and to become more interested in plant science.”
http://nationalcleanplantnetwork.org/Glossary/
NCPN Glossary – a comprehensive glossary for clean plant regulations.
GARDENING, HORTICULTURE
www.ahs.org the American Horticultural Society. Mission from the website: “To open the eyes of all Americans to the vi- tal connection between people and plants, to inspire all Ameri- cans to become responsible caretakers of the Earth, to cele- brate America’s diversity through the art and science of horticulture; and to lead this effort by sharing the Society’s unique national resources with all Americans.”
www.ashs.org “The American Society for Horticultural Sci- ence (ASHS) is the world’s premier professional society for horticultural science. Founded in 1903, the mission of ASHS is to promote and encourage national and international inter- est in scientific research and education in horticulture in all its branches. The more than 2500 ASHS members in all 50 states and 60 countries around the world fulfill this mission by sharing the results of their research, teaching, and exten- sion activities with their colleagues and humankind the world over.” (Quote from the website)
www.gardendigest.com/timegl.htm The History of Gardening: A Timeline From Ancient Times to the Twentieth Century, compiled by Michael P. Garofalo. Summary information by century, with a substantial listing of www links. Dated 2011, some links may be broken and requiresearching.
www.parksandgardens.org This website allows you to search for information related to over 6,000 greenspaces in the United Kingdom, and the more than 2,000 people who have helped to create those parks and gardens.
BLOGS
https://awkwardbotany.com ‘Awkward Botany – Citizen Botany for the Phytocurious’. An on-going blog by Daniel Murphy, PO Box 9862, Boise Idaho 83707, USA.
https://botanistinthekitchen.blog/about/about-the-authors/– Botanist in the Kitchen is an on-going set of essays by botanists Jeanne Osnas and Katherine Preston. They create nearly monthly blogs on topics that tie plant science to food, and maintain the full archive of those articles back to August 2012.
http://plantcurator.com Not recent, but still available on the web, Anna Deters’ “Plant Curator selectively collects crea- tions to build a digital athenaeum of plant beauty and applica- tion in the arts. Designers that work in nature or plant-related fields will find inspiration for design and content here. In this way we help botanical creatives learn from other botanical creatives.”
http://www.indefenseofplants.com/ “It would seem that most people don’t pay any attention to plants unless they are pretty or useful in some way. I reject this reality outright. Plants are everything on this planet. They have this amazing ability to use our nearest star to break apart water and CO2 gas in order to grow and reproduce. From the smallest duckweed to the tallest redwood, the botanical world is full of amazing evolutionary stories. I am here to tell those stories. My name is Matt and I am obsessed with the botanical world. In Defense of Plants is my way of sharing that love with you. “
On-Line Research Literature
EOLSS – Encyclopedia Of Life Support Systems (UNESCO-EOLSS)
https://www.eolss.net/index.aspx
“One of the largest e-Books repositories on the Web, dedi- cated to the health, maintenance and future of the web of life on planet Earth, focusing on the complex connections among all the myriad aspects from natural and social sciences through water, energy, land, food, agriculture, environment, biodiversity, health, education, culture, engineering and tech- nology, management, development and environmental secu- rity carrying knowledge for our times. It has been developed under the auspices of the United Nations Educational, Scien- tific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). It is regarded as the world’s largest comprehensive professional publication carrying state-of-the-art, high quality, peer reviewed, thematically organized archival content in many traditional disci-plines and interdisciplinary subjects with including the cover- age of trans-disciplinary pathways. The contributions are from thousands of scholars from over 100 countries and edited by more than 350 subject experts. It also includes up-to-date coverage of various aspects of sustainable development that are relevant to the current state of the world.”
BHL
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiversity_Heritage_Library
“The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is a consortium of natural history and botanical libraries that cooperate to digitize the legacy literature of biodiversity held in their collections and to make that literature available for open access and responsible use as a part of a global “biodiversity commons.” The BHL consortium works with the international taxonomic community, rights holders, and other interested parties to ensure that this biodiversity heritage is made available to a global audience through open access principles. In partnership with the Internet Archive and through local digitization efforts, the BHL has digitized millions of pages of taxonomic literature, representing over 120,000 titles and over 200,000 volumes.”
EOL – http://eol.org/
“The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) began in 2007 with the bold idea to provide “a webpage for every species.” EOL brings together trusted information from resources across the world such as museums, learned societies, expert scientists, and others into one massive database and a single, easy-to-use online portal at EOL.org .
While the idea to create an online species database had ex- isted prior to 2007, Dr. Edward O. Wilson’s 2007 TED Prize speech was the catalyst for the EOL you see today. The site went live in February 2008 to international media attention.
The initative was started with generous seed funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur and Alfred P. Sloan Foundations. The five original EOL cornerstone institutions included the Field Museum, Harvard University, the Marine Biological Laboratory, Missouri Botanical Garden and the Smithsonian Institution.
Today, the Encyclopedia of Life is expanding to become a global community of collaborators and contributors serving the general public, enthusiastic amateurs, educators, students and professional scientists from around the world. It is sus- tained through the contributions of its supporting institutions and individual donors around the world, as well as through collaborations on a broad portfolio of grants.”
NCBI
The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. This resource is produced by the National Library of Medicine, a division of NIH (National Institutes of Health)
Timelines
https://www.ars.usda.gov/oc/timeline/chron/
United States Department of Agriculture, 144 Years of Agricultural Research
http://ntweb.deltastate.edu/jtift/scbm/index.html
Selected Chronological Bibliography of Biology and Medi- cine. Compiled by James Southworth Steen, Ph.D. Delta State University
A massive undertaking, the Chronology concentrates on Medi- cine, but covers a wide range of biological discovery. Each en- try ties to a source in the bibliography. The Chronology is available in 7 parts, as defined below:
- Part I: 13.75 Ga (giga anna) -1809
- Part II: Ca. 1810 -1884
- Part III: 1885 -1924
- Part IV: 1925 -1947
- Part V: 1948 -1963
- Part VI: 1964 -1979
- Part VII: 1980 – Ca.2000
http://www.allaboutwheat.info/history.html
A timeline produced through the John Innes Centre (Norwich) and the Food Research Institute. Link lost – yet to reconfirm.