Scott's Botanical Links--August 1996

September 1996

Past links:

August 30, 1996 - Ancient Bristlecone Pine

This is an excellent site on the oldest organisms alive on the planet today, the bristlecone pines. Sometimes poetic, beautifully illustrated, the site describes how the ancient bristlecone pines were discovered, where they occur, their dendrochronology and the story of what happened to Prometheus, the oldest living tree (4,950 years). Created and copyrighted ©1995, 1996 by Leonard Miller. (****)

August 29, 1996 - TUCOWS: The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software

TUCOWS is a site that includes all of the Windows utilities and applications that make the Internet navigable. Each program has a short description, a rating (from 1/2 to 5 cows), the publisher's home page, and a downloadable copy of the software. The software includes shareware, freeware and commercial demos. This is a great way to get the utilities you need for the 'Net. Select the server nearest you, for best service (but don't pick Oklahoma this week, because we're down for upgrades). Site by Scott A. Swedorski. (****)

August 28, 1996 - SimTelNet Software FTP Site

Free software and shareware on a wide variety of topics are available at FTP (File Transfer Protocol) sites around the world. One of the most famous is SimTelNet, which is probably mirrored near you. FTP is one of the lowest common demoninators on the Internet. (Most Web browsers support it directly, or you can download an FTP program if you would like.) You (1) click on indexes and look at their descriptions (click on index00.txt), (2) decide what you need and (3) click on the file name to download to your computer. They will usually have to be expanded using PKUNZIP (if they are *.zip files) or executed (if they are *.exe files). Caveat: watch for viruses if you don't know the server! Biology, anti-virus and other software are available here! Brought to you by SimTelNet and your local server. (***1/2)

August 27, 1996 - Plant Hormones

This site includes a World Database of Plant Hormone Workers, information on plant hormones in general, the Plant-Hormones listserv (how to join, members and archives for the last 12 months), other plant hormone sites, conferences, a short history of gibberellins, an interactive mass spectrum of gibberellin A1, two lectures from Aggie Horticulture (Texas A & M) in Acrobat format (*.pdf) including Plant Hormones and Their Role in Growth and Development, and Plant Growth and Development and Environmental Stresses. The administrators of the listerv and I presume this site are Steve Croker and Paul Gaskin both at Long Ashton Research Station, Bristol, UK. (***)

August 26, 1996 - Virtual Garden

Inevitably, one motivation for students to take a botany class is to learn about how to grow plants. This site should help them. It includes links to a plant database, magazine rack (garden sections of some Time-Life owned magazines), the Time-Life Gardening Library, a bookshelf of references, guru (email an "expert"), botanical gardens, a bulletin board and a virtual tour. The plant database allows searches of almost 3,000 species by common or scientific name, and if you are looking for a particular kind of plant, you can search by growth conditions for a plant that meets your needs. The Gardening Library includes the Complete Gardener, Electronic Encyclopedia, House Plant Pavilion and Project Directory. This site is maintained by Time-Life. (****)

August 23, 1996 - PLB143: Evolution of Crop Plants

These are the Internet reading materials for a semester-long course on crop plant evolution. The wide-ranging syllabus touches on the origins of agriculture, early man, how man exploited the features of plants to meet his needs and much more. Individual plants are also discussed including: Amaranth, Amaranthus spp.; Avocado, Persea americana; Cacao, Theobroma cacao; Durian, Durio zibethinus; Mango, Mangifera indica; Melon, Cucumis melo; Papaya, Carica papaya; Pineapple, Ananas comosus; Strawberry, Fragaria ananassa; Tea, Camellia sinensis. In the spirit of the internet, this course material is provided freely for personal use. For institutional or for-profit use, please contact Paul Gepts at the University of California, Davis. (****)

August 22, 1996 - Wisconsin Fast Plants

One of the critical problems in botany is that of growing plants fast enough to captivate student's interest. Wisconsin Fast Plants is a science education and outreach program located at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and funded by the National Science Foundation. WFP produces newsletters, maintains a listserv and distributes seeds of the rapidly-cycling Brassica that is the fast plant (35 days from seed to seed). There is also access to the WFP gopher site which has sparse information. Information about Brassicas around the world is somewhat informative, but it is poorly structured. Instead of taking advantage of the hypertext to establish themes and links to the five pages, they are sequentially linked and introduced with a large (400 X 400) poor quality cartoon of a bee holding the page number and the critical illustrations are linked with very small thumbnail photos (about 100 X 100) that connect to very small graphics (around 200 X 200). I feature this site to emphasize the importance of these as a botanical resource. As a Web site, I could give it as an example of what not to do! Maintained by WFP project. (**)

August 21, 1996 - Geniculate Coralline Red Algae

Coralline red algae are among the most beautiful in the ocean. This site is an excellent survey of their biology, including information on: kinds of corallines, their importance, organization, reproduction, competitive interactions, effects of grazing, definition of the Corallinales, collection and preservation, decalcification, sectioning and staining, preparing coralline algae for Transmission Electron Microscopy, families and subfamilies of nongeniculate corallines, generic descriptions in the Lithophylloideae, Mastophoroideae, Melobesioideae and Austrolithoideae, an online bibliography and Coralline News - a newletter dedicated to the coralline algae. This is linked to a very well designed departmental page with some unique content. Assembled and maintained by Prof. Derek W. Keats, Botany Department, University of the Western Cape, South Africa. (****)

August 20, 1996 - WWW-Virtual Library: Microscopy

This is another site that has been distracting me. The microscopy site is still in beta-testing, so any suggestions are welcome. The "head VL person" is on vacation for August; when he returns, the fate of these pages will be determined. Hopefully, they will be incorporated as the newest new area in the WWW-VL. This is a nice teaching resource for putting a lot of microscopy Web resources in one place. Maintained by Scott Russell, EM Lab, University of Oklahoma. (****)

August 19, 1996 - WWW-Virtual Library: Botany

When CERN created the Web, there were no search engines. Therefore the only way to navigate the Web was through lists like this one at CERN. This lists essential links in botany and is kept up-to-date. The Botany WWW-VL was created by Keith Robison at Harvard who receive a Magellan 4-star rating for this site and who maintained it up until June. Currently maintained as a public service by S. Russell. (****)

August 16, 1996 - Biology Hypertextbook Chapters

This is a good biology hypertext book for undergraduate students and AP biology students alike! The topics covered are reasonably complete in the cell/molecular/genetics areas. Chapters currently supported include: Chemistry Review, Large Molecules, Cell Biology, Enzyme Biochemistry, Glycolysis and the Krebs Cycle, Photosynthesis, Central Dogma (DNA), Mendelian Genetics, Prokaryotic Genetics and Gene Expression, Recombinant DNA, Immunology. This site may be slightly too advanced for non-majors at smaller universities--a good intro to the topics for most others. There are new chapters added from time to time. Assembled and maintained at hyperbio@mit.edu. (****)

August 12-15, 1996 - Gone to a Conference!

I'm at a FASEB conference, so no new postings until Friday.

August 9, 1996 - Trees of the Pacific Northwest

This site is the home page for a dendrology course at OSU and a nice informational page in its own right. The main features are an illustrated, graphic dichotomous key to the trees, information about conifers of the Northwest, 4 mystery trees to identify and links to other tree sites. The dichotomous key quickly provides the user with a genus name, the characteristics of the genus and links to species pages for the actual identification. There are numerous thumbnail photos attached to excellent color photographs and primitive sketches. Too bad it's mainly just for the Northwest! Site constructed by Betsy Littlefield and Ed Jensen; College of Forestry, Oregon State University. (****)

August 8, 1996 - BIODIDAC Picture Resources

Pictures holdings in Botany/Botanique include members of the Ascomycota, Bacteria, Basidiomycota, Bryophyta, Chlorophyta, Chrysophyta, Coniferophyta, Dicotyledons, General, Monocotyledons, Myxomycota, Phaeophyta, Pterophyta, Rhodophyta and Zygomycota. Sizes range from 5K to 50K GIFs with sizes up to 1200 x 1200 for diagrams and 256 color GIFs of 400 x 400 resolution. Send email address to access pictures. More than 2200 are housed here in all areas of biology. Site constructed by Department of Biology, University of Ottawa, Canada. (****)

August 7, 1996 - Periodic Table of Elements

A periodic table is one of the staple references of a scientist. They are all very similar, but I pick this one for its coverage of x-ray emission spectra (for EDS or WDS). Each element also has the usual constants stated, plus relative isotope concentrations, half-lives of unstable isotopes and other goodies. Also, there are links to other periodic tables. Allen R. Sampson, Advanced Research Systems. Nice job Allen! (****)

August 6, 1996 - Marine Botany

This is part of a photography database at California Polytechnic Universtiy at San Luis Obispo. This section contains photos of 23 marine plants and algae common to the California coast and information on the taxa. The photos include 60K to 90K JPG files (often 640 X 480) of high quality with thumbnails included. This site has been closed.

August 5, 1996 - FAQs about Tree and Shrub Care

This is a much more practical site than I usually feature. It features pages on: planting trees (when, how, what not to do), pruning, organic gardening, coping with drought, problems with plantings, mulching, soil compaction, prevention of damage and a variety of new topics periodically. The write-ups are accurate and reasonably complete, though not encyclopedic. Surprisingly, this is a commercial site, but one that shares a lot of information. Site constructed by Keslick & Son, Modern Arboriculture & Landscape Maintenance(***1/2)

August 2, 1996 - Mechanisms of Herbicide Action - gone, but not forgotten

This is a very nice overview of the cell biological mechanisms of herbicide action in plants as found in Plant Biology 122 lecture notes at UC-Davis. These are put on the Web as supplemental readings. Topics include Absorption/Uptake of herbicides, Mitotic Inhibitors and Amino Acid Synthesis Inhibitors. Each site is complete with chemical formulas and descriptions of mode of action. Site by Richard H. Falk, Department of Plant Biology, University of California, Davis. (***1/2)

August 1, 1996 - Biology 10 Supplemental Readings - gone, but not forgotten

This is a model of how readings on the Web can be both authoritative and a resource to advanced distance learning. It is not light reading, but it is comprehensible, current, and appropriately illustrated. Topics include the: Origin of life, A little chemistry, Cell structure and function, Photosynthesis, Respiration, Cell Division, Heredity, Molecular Biology, Genetic engineering. Site by Richard H. Falk, Department of Plant Biology, University of California, Davis. (****)

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