Regional floras: increasing their value while reducing their cost

¹ Intermountain Herbarium, Department of Biology, Utah State University, Logan, Utah 84322-5305, USA
² Department of Botany, Altai State University, Russia
³ Department of Environmental Management, Biological Institute, Tomsk State University, Russia
⁴ Center for Plant Science and Biodiversity, University of Swat, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan
⁵ Department of Computer Science, Utah State University, 4205 Old Main Hill, Logan, Utah 843224205, USA

^* Corresponding author: mary.barkworth@usu.edu

Abstract

Regional floras are primary resources for plant identification, an essential step in developing conservation strategies. They also provide students with a scientific window on the plants around them and help them learn botanical terminology, but they are expensive to maintain and publish. We are developing web-accessible updates for different floras, as part of which we are using online resources to help us work more effectively while rapidly providing richer resources. We use Key Base for sharing dichotomous keys, linking the terminal taxa to subsidiary keys or descriptive taxon pages. Taxon pages are generated in OpenHerbarium which enables integrating specimen and observation data with descriptions, line drawings, and images and displaying maps based on georeferenced specimen data. Its nomenclatural backbone is easily modified to reflect new treatment and can also handle multiple taxonomies. We are examining is the possibility of using a Wikipedia approach to provide a glossary.