Regional floras: increasing their value while reducing their cost

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.