If you are interested in the flora of the world, endangered or not, there is tons of information available to you on the Net. A number of Web and Gopher sites have sprung up that feature searchable databases on herbarium collections, type specimens, ethnobotanical uses of plants by Native Americans, endangered species, even live specimens. Point your broswer to the following sample.
American Indian Ethnobotany database
http://www.umd.umich.edu/cgi-bin/herb/
This searchable database includes foods, drugs, dyes, fibers, and
other uses of plants (a total of over 47,000 items) used by 291 Native American groups of 3,895 species from 243 different plant families. The site is maintained by Daniel E. Moerman, PhD (dmoerman@umich.edu) at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.
Botany Slides on the Web
http://lm.ucdavis.edu/slide_sets/slide_sets.html
Thisis an interseting web site from UCDavis that is a slide set in botany,
chemistry, clinical human anatomy, and wildlife and fisheries biology. There are 8 sets of slides in Botany 102. I'm guessing they may be
related to courses being taught at the school. There aren't any labels on the
slides so you must know what you are looking at.
US Fish and Wildlife Service Web Site
http://www.fws.gov/
Interested in our endangered species? Here you can get the program's overview, the ES Act,map of regions, recovery programs, state lists, foreign lists, success stories, and of course the US species indices, a listing of all endangered species in the country, both plant and animal. Databases of endangered species can be downloaded.
Botanical Museum, Finnish Museum Of Natural History
http://www.helsinki.fi/kmus/
A great site for collections in Finland, and about a thousand links to other collections.
University of Texas at Austin Web Site
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/Libs/LSL/botint.html
This Texas site has a collection of general guides and lists, several sites specific
to Texas botany, botany-related organizations and resources on the Web, and many links
to botanical collections, from the Australian Botanical Gardens to the US National
Herbarium. Several gopher sites and newsgroups round out the offerings.
Herbaria and Collections Web Site
http://www.ualberta.ca/~slis/guides/botany/herbaria.htm
This is an alphabetically arranged collection of international herbaria and living collections containing large searchable databases of thousands of species. Prepared by Mary Campenot and Emily Kruchowski, as part of a master's course in Library and Information Studies at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, it is an excellent launching pad for researchers, or anyone interested in botany. Links go to:
1. Arnold Arboretum Living Collections Gopher Site
gopher://huh.harvard.edu:70/11/collections_info/aa
Has records for 14,889 individual trees, shrubs, and vines, and access to a searchable database containing 5,191 distinct species and varieties, with taxonomic
data and location on the Arboretum grounds.
2. Australian National Herbarium Gopher Site
gopher://155.187.10.12:4320/1CBGlabel
Serachable database using plant name, family name, and collector as keywords.
3. Brazilian Herbaria Web site
http://www.ftpt.br/cgi-bin/bdtnet/herbariabr
A searchable index in Portuguese and English to the holdings of the major herbaria in Brazil.
Nothing I requested was found however.
4. California Academy of Science Botanical Type Specimens Gopher Site
gopher://CAS.calacademy.org:70/11/depts/botany
A type specimen catalog with over 9,000 records of the collections of the California
Academy of Science Herbarium and the Herbarium of Stanford University.
Has a searchable database.
5. Conneticut College Herbarium Web site
http://herbarium.conncoll.edu/
A collection of 12,000 specimens. Contains a searchable database.
6. Farlow Diatom Collection (Harvard) Gopher Site
gopher://huh.harvard.edu/11/collections_info/huh
A searchable database of 13,000 associated diatom records and the Harvard Herbaria Type Specimen Catalog.
7. Gray Herbarium Index (Harvard) Gopher Site
gopher://huh.harvard.edu:70/11/project_information/authority/botany/gray_cards
A searchable database of over 287,000 records of New World vascular plant
taxa dating from 1886.
8. Peabody Museum Paleobotany Collection (Yale) Gopher Site
gopher://george.peabody.yale.edu:70/11/main/Paleobotany
This Collection, which dates from 1853, contains over 100,000
specimens. You can search the type specimens or full collection. Also has the collections of the New York Botanical Garden and Princeton College.
9. Plant Fossil Record Database Web Site
http://sunrae.uel.ac.uk/palaeo/index.html
A great searchable database containing descriptions of thousands of extinct plants. As the site says: "Names, places, and ages can be searched and the occurrences are instantly plotted on a global map. Patterns of migration and evolution through geological time can be clearly examined to help better understand the history of climatic and environmental change."
10. Swedish Museum of Natural History Web Site
http://www.nrm.se/
Several collections are here. Lichen Harbarium. Pollen collections. The Linnean Herbarium is in Swedish. Type specimen collections for the Scandinavian and Regnell Herbaria and more.
11. U.S. National Herbarium Type Specimen Register gopher://nmnhgoph.si.edu:70/11/.botany/.types
Smithsonian Institution catalog of over 88,000 type specimens of flowering plants, ferns, and non-vascular plants. Separate searchable databases for ferns, flowering plants, mosses, hepatics and lichens, and algae.
©1996 Don Rittner