History

Where are we coming from? Starting as a resource for numerous flower shows, our database grew and grew to include plants used by gardeners across the USA, and those featured in several publications of the American Horticultural Society. The database assisted the publication by Southern Living/Sunset/Time Life of several books geared for Western and Southern gardeners, and continued to be used by show committees and exhibitors in flower shows, all across the country. For several years it was an on-line resource for www.Learn2Grow.com. The original authority for plant nomenclature was RHS Index of Garden Plants, Mark Griffiths, editor, Timber Press. ISBN: 0333591496(now out of print). 

The Plant List. org (TPL)  http://www.theplantlist.org The Plant List (2018). Version 1.1, Published on the Internet.  was the nomenclature authority  replacing this tome. It was a collaborative on-line resource under the direction of Rafaël H A Govaerts - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , supported by RHS, Kew, Missouri Botanic and others On July 27, 2018,  The Plant List. org (TPL)  was discontinued.  

 According to Rafaël Govaerts <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. - Biodiversity Informatics & Spatial Analysis Herbarium, Library Art & Archives Royal Bortanic Gardens, Kew TW( 3AE UK,  Plants of the World On-line (POWO) http://plantsoftheworldonline.org/ is the replacement and  will  be our primary reference beginning August 2018 . Here is the link to the terms of use for POWO. http://www.plantsoftheworldonline.org/terms-and-conditions . In addition, to this resource,  family names will be verified using APG http://www.mobot.org/MOBOT/research/APweb/; accepted names and synonyms can be easily identified using https://wcvp.science.kew.org/ and genera and species information will be verified using the International Plant Names Index  http://www.ipni.org/index.html.Nomenclature is based upon the APGIV system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APG_IV_system

Until recently the Fungi were considered within the Plant Kingdom. Now they placed are within a separate Kingdom, placed between the Plants and the Animal Kingdoms.  For more clarification https://www.livescience.com/53618-fungus.html. Regarding the mushrooms, toadstools, lichen and other fungi,in plantipedia, I have used numerous sources to id my images of the fungi but have no confidence that the names listed match the images posted. As many of these fungi are extremely toxic, and others are hallucinogens, please note that the names and photos of these plants in plantipedia are merely  'best guess" suggestions from several mushroom id apps and other online resources and are not authoritative in any way. Chuck Marecic has graciously shared his stash of images of fungi with us, and Eric Milligan of the New Hampshire Mushroom Company in Tamworth NH, has expanded our culinary appreciation too.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Dr. Mark Miller, and posthumously, Dr. Marc Cathey, former President Emeritus of the American Horticultural Society, for their guidance and support; the members of both the National Garden Clubs Inc. and the Garden Club of America for testing my data; the many nurseries who shared their catalogues; and the staff of the American, Bermuda, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Southeastern Horticultural Societies for helping me develop the original program. Special thanks to the institutions and plant societies who have helped to verify both information and photographs including the Instituto de Botánica Darwinion in Buenos Aires, and the library of the Singapore Botanic Gardens. In addition I wish to thank the many flower show committees across the country who let me test the database and/or incorporate data from their shows - including but not limited to - Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan,Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington DC, Washington State, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and others. I wish to thank La Federacion Costarricense de Clubes de Jardines de Costa Rica for allowing me to include photographs from their 2013 flower show "Costa Rica Eterna Primavera". In addition, we have photographed plants in Argentina, Barbados, Baja California, Belgium, Borneo, Brazil, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Great Britain, Hungary, Ireland, India, Italy, Ireland, Kenya, Laos, Mexico, Panama, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain,The Netherlands, Uruguay, Viet Nam, Virgin Islands and more. Recently I had the opportunity to photograph the fruits and vegeatables in the Dekalb Farmers Market, 3000 East Ponce De Leon Ave Decatur GA. http://www.dekalbfarmersmarket.com/ This extraordinary place draws unusual and very fresh produce from the 4 corners of the earth. I learned more about these unusual fruits vegetables and their uses from my time in this farmers market than in all my years of studying about them.

Special thanks to the Arnold Arboretum and the Gray Herbarium, of Harvard University; The New England Wildflower Soc., (now called the Native Plant Trust) William Brumback, Arthur Haines and Ted Elliman; Jim Folsom and John Trager of the Huntington Botanical Gardens; and Bill  and Melissa Cullina, Coastal Maine Botanic Gardens, for their help with this project, and the many plant societies that have permitted me to photograph entries at their shows. To Mary Ann Patterson, Don & Betty Call, your help and encouragement were much appreciated. To Jean Jones and Paul Parisi, thank you for adapting my original program, Showtime, to become Plantipedia®!

As we add photographs and supporting data to the plants in Plantipedia®, it will become ever more useful. Mistakes are inevitable and unintentional. This is a work in progress, with botanical names changing, old data being updated and corrected, and new plants and photos being added as time permits. Thank you to Rafaël H A Govaerts , Dr. Peter Stevens and Dr. Kanchi Gandhi  for assisting me in defining the options related to ongoing taxonomic changes, and Dr. Peter Raven for his encouragement along the way.

The primary online reference for plant nomenclature in Plantipedia as of August 1, 2018 will be Plants of the World Online - http://plantsoftheworldonline.org/ based in Kew. RBG, Kew cannot warrant the quality or accuracy of the data which will be updated as changes are identified. In cases where a genus does not show in this resource, as it may be a synonym. Kew's World Checklist of Selected Plant Families http://wcsp.science.kew.org/qsearch.do  and their World Checklist of Vascular Plants lists the genera and identifies the current eaccepted names in bold text and the outdated names in regular text. As mentioned above, if a name cannot be verified in either of these sources, then try their primary resource,  IPNI, the International Plant Name Index http://www.ipni.org/index.html. I wish to again thank Rafaël H A Govaerts for  his ongoing assistance as I try to keep up with these ongoing nomenclature changes.

Additional verification will continue to be through Dr. Peter Stevens' web site for the  Angiosperm Phylogeny Group APG http://www.mobot.org/MOBOT/research/APweb/, and Dr. Kanchi Gandhi, of Harvard Univ. Herbarium, Editor of the International Plant Names Index  http://www.ipni.org/index.html and editor of the Flora of North America project http://floranorthamerica.org/ 

The Director of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, William "Ned" Friedman 's Flickr account Arb O'Retum showcases his amazing images of many of the plants in  the Arboretum's collections. He has graciously allowed us to link to these images. Connected with each image is data about the provenance of the plant, and its location in the Arboretum's landscape. Many of these trees were collected  as seeds  in Asia  and other parts of the world in the late 1800's. Quite a few are  globally rare and or endangered.

The USDA plant profiles http://plants.usda.gov/ web site is referenced and the data is hyperlinked  to their site giving the status of, and  the mapping of native plants, noxious weeds and invasive plants.

Thanks to Anne Frances, Ph.D. of NatureServe, the "G1 - Critcally imperilled" status for the nation's most at risk plants is being incorporated  into the status data for each of these plants, time permitting. Copyright © 2017 NatureServe, 4600 N. Fairfax Dr., 7th Floor, Arlington Virginia 22203, U.S.A. All Rights Reserved.

Plants being conserved as part of the National Collection of the Center for Plant Conservation consortium are identified and linked both to the CPC site and subsequently to their sponsoring institution. 

The Native Plant Trust (formerly New England Wildfower Society) has granted permission to link the plantipedia plant records to their Go Botany site which is an on-line plant id resource funded in part by the National Science Foundation. Go Botany gives us the opportunity to explore many New England native plants. Of particular interest to me are those plants currently listed as of special concern, threatended, rare, endangered, or presumed extirpated in one or more of the New England States. Among  these are "387 globally and regionally rare species in New England, of which 10 occur nowhere else in the world." The NPT Seed Ark Campaign  seeks to save these plants in perpetuity. Their collaborative effort  with the Nature Conservancy to protect the 234 most endangered habitats of New England is an impotant initiative.

Recently I while researching the native plants of California and  the Southwest I came across some amazing images by Wynn Anderson. He has graciously permitted me to incorporate many of them into plantipedia! This is a phenominal opportunty. His extensive photographic collections are featured in  Calphoto, the Chihuahua Desert Plants site at UTEP, the USDA Plants Database and the Ladybird Johnson National Wildflower Database at the University OF Texas at Austin.

Special thanks to the photographers whose work is displayed on the Calphotos site  who have allowed me to include their images  through their reuse  policy under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License or by written permission :Richard Spellenberg, noted photographer and author of several books on the plants of the Southwest: Keir Morse, professional field botanist; Eric White, who photographs endemic plants in CA and HI; Gary A. Monroe, Nevada native plant society member, photographer and grower; Zoya Akulova-Barlow -botanist & environmental consultant; and Mary Winter, amateur botanist. I'm suggeting that anyone interested in California's native plants use the Calflora.org web site "Calflora: Information on California plants for education, research and conservation. [web application]. Berkeley, California: The Calflora Database [a non-profit organization]. Available: https://www.calflora.org/   (Accessed: June 26, 2022)."

Thank you Art Scarpa for allowing me to photograph your collections; to Carrie Waterman for sharing your terrific images of unusual succulents; to Linda Milton for sharing images from your garden; to Nan Carder for sharing her beautiful images with us; to Joanne Lenden for allowing us to include your wildflower image collection, and to the Colorado Dahlia Society, member of the American Dahlia Society, for permitting us to link directly/remotely to images  on their web sites. In addition, we would like to thank Allan and Judi Davidson for sharing their lovely images of Bermuda's flora; Peter Holmes for his images of Bermuda's Mystery Roses; and Helen Dillon for her help with identifying the glorious plants in her famous garden in Dublin, Ireland, and Vickie Denton, Virginia Almand, Barbara May, Margot Paddock, Nadia Aramburu, and Chuck Marecic and others for allowing me to include their images.

In addition David. J Robson, horticulture instructor and author of the 2012 edition of "The Handbook for  Horticulture Exhibiting and Judging Flower Shows, National Garden Clubs Inc". and  Ret. Extension Horticulture and  Pesticide Safety Specialist, Univ. Illinois has allowed me to include his extensive photographic collections. Most of the lovely images of peonies in the database are his images.

Thank you to those institutions who have allowed me to photograph in their gardens. Images of plants from these institutions are included as well as plants from other places: Here is a partial list: 

AL: Bellingrath Home & Gardens; Birmingham Botanical Garden; AR: Garvan Woodland Gardens; AZ: Arizona Sonora Desert Museum; The Tucson Botanical Gardens; CA: Fullerton Arboretum & Gardens;  Ganna Walska Lotusland;  Golden Gate Park CA;  Los Angeles Co. Arboretum & Botanic Garden; Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden; San Diego Botanic Garden - Quail Bot. Gdn; Santa Barbara Botanic Garden;  Sherman Library & Gardens; Strybing Arboretum;  The Huntington; The San Diego Zoo;  CO: Denver Botanic Garden; CT: Bartlett Arboretum & Gardens CT; Elizabeth Park Conservancy CT ;DC: National Arboretum; US. Botanic Garden; Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens; Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens; Four Arts Garden;Harry P. Leu Gardens; Jacksonville Zoo & Gardens;Marie Selby Gardens; McKee Botanical Garden; Miami Beach Botanical Garden;  Montgomery Botanical Center;  Mounts Botanical GardenThe Kampong; Vizcaya Museum and Gardens;GA: Callaway Gardens; The Atlanta Botanical Garden; UGA State Botanical Garden Athens GA; IA Reiman Gardens, Iowa State University ;  IL: Chicago Botanic GardenKY: YewDell Gardens; MA: Arnold Arboretum ; Berkshire Botanic Gardens;  Elm Bank ;Long Hill Sedgewick Gardens ;Native Plant Trust - New England Wildflower Society Garden in the Woods; The Botanic Garden of Smith College (greenhouses) ; Tower Hill Botanic Garden MD: Brookside Gardens;Ladew Topiary Gardens;ME: Coastal Maine Botanic Garden:MI: Frederik Meijer Gardens MO: Missouri Botanical Garden; NC: Biltmore ConservatoryNH: Bedrock Gardens; Dartmouth College Life Sciences greenhouses NH;  Fuller Gardens NH;The Fells; NJ: Holly Collections Rutgers;NY:Bailey Arboretum NY; Brooklyn Botanic Garden; Buffalo & Eire Co. Botanical Gardens; Cornell Botanic Gardens; New York Botanical Garden; Stonecrop Gardens; Wave Hill; OH: Cleveland Botanic Garden OH: Holden Arboretum PA: Longwood Gardens; Phipps Conservatory; RI: Roger Williams Park Botanical Center RI; TN: Cheekwood TX: Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center; San Antonio Botanic Garden; UT: Red Butte Gardens; VA: Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden ; Norfolk Botanical Garden, WA: Bloedel Reserve ;Rhododendron Species Botanical Garden;WI: Boerner Botanical Gardens. In Canada, I have photographed plants in the Montreal Botanic Garden; and Les Jardins de Quatre-Vents (La Malbaie).

Recently I have had the opportunity to visit and photograph in the Jardim Botanico Plantarum, Nova Odessa, Brazil where  Harri Lorenzi's extensive work with (and many publications about) the at-risk plants of " all Brazilian ecosystems,., of the Atlantic Forest and the Amazon region are featured". 

Thank you to The Center for Plant Conservation San Diego Zoo Global http://saveplants.org/ for permission to remotely link to the data within the records of the CPC's National Collection of endangered plants; to Logee's Greenhouses; Brent & Becky's Bulbs,  Prairie Moon Nursery, and TheSucculentGarden.com , Plants Delight, Inc.  and Monrovia https://www.monrovia.com/plant-catalog/ who have agreed to let us use and or link remotely to their image inventory. These links are a work in progress.

Thank you to Moulton Farm, Oliver's Nurseries, Russell's Greenhouses, Sylvan Nurseries, Corliss Brothers, Avant Gardens, San Marcos Growers, Wayside Nursery, Broken Arrow, Pleasant View, Millican's and many other garden centers, botanic gardens and nurseries around the world  for allowing me to photograph in your gardens.

Thank you Chip Taylor of Monarch Watch for allowing us to link remotely to the Monarch Watch collection of unusual milkweed images, and a very special thanks to Karl Gercens for permitting us to link remotely to his extraordinarily beautiful plant images from the 4 corners of the earth.

My trips to Barbados in 2016-2019 were greatly enriched by the generosity of Dr. Sean Carrington who helped me identify the plants we saw, and linked me to two amazing internet resources - his own web site http://ecflora.cavehill.uwi.edu/index.html which is a beautifully organized compendium of the plants of the Eastern Carribbean, and the Smithsonian's http://botany.si.edu/antilles/Westindies/. Dr. Carrington's books continue to be a huge resource for me.   In addition, while in Barbados, Sharon Cooke, of Andromeda Botanical Gardens, David Spieler of Flower Forest Botanical Gardens, and Georgina Trew of PEG Farm & Nature Reserve, all were most helpful.

Thank you John A. Floyd, Ph.D. Southern Living, Editor-in-Chief, ret. for sharing your images and your blog http://birminghamgardeningtoday.com/ which has fabulous content and sensible tips on plants and gardening advice so useful to plant-huggers well beyond the Birmingham area.

Thank you to Forest & Kim Starr of HI for allowing me to incorporate their images into the data on Plantipedia. Their work on the native plants of HI is astonishing. http://www.starrenvironmental.com. And  Thank you to Kate Brenner for permission to use her photos and to link to her amazing web site https://www.paradisefoundnursery.com/ that has beautifully photographed images of rare and unusual succulents and cacti. In addition, the herbarium collections of the participants in the  Jstor consortium have provided me with valuable access to primary resources of rare species. The Botany department of the University of HI site has a comprehensive photo database of the endemic plants, many of which are included here as they are freely shared when used for educational purposes. http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/faculty/carr/natives.htm. Included in Plantipedia are images by Gerald D. Carr,  and. J.K. Obata, C.H.Lamoureux, M.LeGrande, Linda Cuddihy, Jeni Stemmerman, Tim Motley, Sheila Conant, D.H.Lorence, Ken Wood, Robert Hobdy, Joan Canfield and others.

Thank you to the folks at https://www.schreinersgardens.com who have allowed me to include their images and link to their web site. I've been a fan of their amazing catalogue for many years, and being able to include images of their Iris is an honor.

Thank you Dr. M Patrick Griffith , Exec. Dir. Montgomery Botanic Center Coral Gables, FL ,for allowing me to include your images. 

Some of those who have assisted with plant id include among many others, are Lucinda McDade, Director Rancho Santa Anna Botanic Garden, Jennifer Possley, Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens, Dr. James Cobb, Scotland, noted authority on Meconopsis, and Arthur Haines, Native Plant Trust (formerly known as New England Wildflower Society). Arthur Haines, research botanist and author of the New England Wild Flower Society's Flora Novae Angliae, has been so very helpful in identifying my images of New England plants, and has allowed me to use his images within Plantipedia as well. In addition, The Native Plant Trust's GoBotany web site is easy to use, is comprehensive, and has wonderful images of New England's flora. Some of those images, ( by Jason Sachs) designated on the Go Botany site as being freely shared for individual and non commercial use have been incorporated into the records of plantipedia. The Native Plant Trust continues to work to protect the most vulnerable of New England's flora in support of the UN's Global Strategy for Plant Conservation .

Recently  Richie Steffan, Exec. Dir of the Elizabeth C.Miller Botanical Garden in Seattle WA, helped me with a puzzling fern - my query had been  passed on to her via The Hardy Hardy Fern Foundation  https://hardyferns.org/- which is a great resource! 

Jennifer Possley of Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens ,"South Florida Conservation Program Manager" has given permission to include images from the FTBG collections. A visit to the FTBG web site is most informative- https://www.fairchildgarden.org/Horticulture/Whats-Blooming  FTBG' conservation efforts on behalf of the endangered plants is cutting edge. Here is an article about Jennifer.Possley and her conservation work throughout this vulnerable eco-region.  Martin V. Feather, Butterfly Exhibit Manager at FTBG , has given permission to include his images and has assisted me in identfying tropical butterflies as well. Arielle J. Simon President of the Tropical Fern & Exotic Plant Society has taken many of the images on the FTBG site and has given us permission to use them.

Henriette Kress, AHG Helsinki Finland,  a renowned medicinal plant expert, has been hosting a fascinating site since the 1990's and has given us permission to use her photographs. Time permitting, if a plant is keyed as medicinal then it is my intent that the link to her site will appear. http://www.henriettes-herb.com .

Kete' Brenner's Paradise Found Nursery has shared her lovely images of cacti and succulents with plantipedia. Her images add greatly to the records in plantipedia.  I encourage you to explore her site with its extensive inventory of rare succulents and cacti. 

In my searching for a credible grower and photographer of Uncarina I contacted E. Bihrmann in Denmark -  Senior consultant HT1 INTERNATIONAL NATURE CONSULTANCY who has graciously permitted me to incorporate his images of caudiciforms http://bihrmann.com/caudiciforms/caudex.asp.

In addition,  Dr. Admadej Trnkoczy  has agreed to allow me to use a selection fo his superb images - some of which are found on the https://calphotos.berkeley.edu site, and others in his flickr account https://www.flickr.com/photos/atrnkoczy/albums and others in Mushroom Observer.https://mushroomobserver.org/observer/observations_by_user/931

Tony Henehan and Rick Snider of Texas Parks and Wildlife helped to id images of the plants In the Lower Rio Grande area.

More recently, Mel Reynolds of Territorial Seed Company, PO Box 158, Cottage Grove, OR 97424-0061, has allowed us to include their images of vegetables.  We have been ordering seeds from Territorial Seed catalogues for many years  and  highly recommend them. Their website is http://www.territorialseed.com/.

As the data about our native pollinators and their plant preferences, and the need to protect them and their habitats has become a focus of the nation's plant conservationists, I have begun the process of correlating properly documented information about our pollinators with the plant data in plantipedia. The remarkable book "Pollinators of Native Plants" by Heather Holm published in 2014 by the Pollinator Press LLC, Minnesota has served as the primary resource and basis for the native plant pollinators listed. Heather has researched and photographed 65 of our native plants and their pollinators. In addition, data from Bumble Bees of North America: An identification Guide,  by Williams, Thorp, Richardson & Colla 2014 Princeton University Press has been incorporated, as well as the data from the Xerces Society's Guide to Attracting Native Pollinators: Protecting North America's Bees and Butterflies, Storey Publishing 2011. Heather Holm's new book, Bees: An identification and Native Plant Forage Guide pub by Pollination Press LLC , a must-have reference, is winner of four book awards. Her web site is www.pollinatorsNativePlants.com.

Information about the pollinators of North American Orchids has been included from the North American Orchid Conservation Center http://goorchids.northamericanorchidcenter.org/.

Information about the bees in TX and their preferred plants is easily accessible on the new Wild Bees of Texas at The National Butterfly Center's website.,  This web site  identifies the pollinator plants of TX and the bees that frequent them and  features the extraordinary images of bees by Paula Sharp. Data from this web site has been included in our pollinator data and cited.

John VanDyk of the Iowa State University Dept. of Entomology, has graciously allowed us to link our pollinator data to www.bugguide.net, his online web reference ("For the identification of insects spiders and their kin for the United States and Canada"). copyright © 2003-2017 Iowa State University In addition, information from various other publications of the Xerces Society   and the National Wildlife Federation have been incorporated. I Katie Heineman, Ph.D., at the Center for Plant Conservation, has been compiling data on the pollinators of the plants in the CPC's national collection. Her research is carefully referenced, and where used, CPC is cited. At some point pictures of the pollinators will be hyperlinked or included in a manner similar to the way we have included data and photographs of the nation's butterflies. This is a work in progress. The pollinators, predators/beneficial insects and other critters,  and the propagators of our native plants are  a diverse group. I'm learning more about them daily, and will be adding images as i go along. Thank you Jackie Stone for sharing your images, and Doug Tallamy for sharing your data and your inspiration.

 I wish to thank the family of Corliss K. Engle for allowing me to include her plant images, and most of all thank you, Nat Dane, for sharing your pictures with us in addition to your unflagging support during these many long years of developing this program.

Arabella S. Dane