Scott's Botanical Links--November 1996

November 26, 1996 - Indigenous Trees of Gauteng

This site is intended to increase awareness of the trees and shrubs indigenous to South Africa, and the Gauteng Highveld region near Johannesburg, specifically. The goal is to feature hardy indigenous plants that are available for gardening and to encourage the propagation of species that are under threat. A brief virtual tour leads into a Tree-of-the Month site, descriptions of previous trees and highly selective links to tree, urban agriculture and conservation sites. Although much of the site is black-and-white, this seems to lend to the impact of this website rather than detracting from it. Copyright © 1996 Grant Harding. (***1/2)

November 25, 1996 - APSnet - Plant Pathology Online

This is the home page for the American Phytopathological Society, an organization of scientists committed to understanding the diseases of plants. This site is a model for the home page of a plant science organization. The site has pages that include tables of contents for three journals, Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions, Phytopathology, and Plant Disease, society information & directory, meetings, career information, news and views, books, slides, and APSnet subscriber information. Particularly useful is the annually-updated page on Common Names for Plant Diseases which lists diseases by crop plant host and gives the scientific name of the exact pest. Career information includes links to an APS career brochure, university plant pathology programs, job placement, profiles of candidates and Internet resources for job hunters. A well -thought out site of the American Phytopathological Society. (***1/2)

November 22, 1996 - Flora of North America

The Flora of North America project is a long-term project to gather information on all of the plants on the continent north of Mexico. This site will be used to provide newsletters, progress reports, authoritative species information, distribution maps and images for approximately 20,000 species of vascular plants and bryophytes of North America when it is completed. The effort is the result of unprecedented collaboration among systematists and is coordinated by the Missouri Botanical Garden. Currently a fledgling site, it should be completed by the 1999 International Botanical Congress in St. Louis. (**)

November 21, 1996 - Virtual Plants: 3D Measurement and Simulation of Morphogenesis

If you are interested in how plants grow, at some point you will want to simulate it. That is exactly what this site does through static photos through time and through Quicktime^tm animations. The pictures are high quality GIFs of modest bandwidth (5 to 30KB), while the animations are all *.qt files of 600K to 1.2MB. These are high quality computer simulations that may prove useful in helping to control pests as well as better understanding plant behavior between the cellular and crop level. © Cooperative Research Centre for Tropical Pest Management, Jim Hanan, University of Queensland, Australia. (****) [The Quicktime^tm viewer is available from Apple at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/.]

November 20, 1996 - The C-Fern - A Plant for Teaching and Research

Ceratopteris is a fast-growing fern (spore to sexual reproduction in 10 days) that seems ideal for reintroducing ferns into teaching -- college and high school. Although the site is graphically-impaired (no photos?!), there is a detailed manual on how to grow Ceratopteris, how to isolate their DNA, where to obtain spores and who to contract for more information. A promising start for a nice on-line teaching manual. This site was produced with support from the National Science Foundation and the University of Tennessee. ©1996 Thomas R. Warne and Leslie G.Hickok. (***)

November 19, 1996 - Oklahoma Wildflowers

When Charles Lewallen got his Casio QV-10 digital camera started photographing roadside plants in eastern Oklahoma, he had no idea that he would soon have over 150 very nice photographs for the Web. The pictures are 320 X 240 JPG files, filed by common name alphabetically and by family. (***1/2) - On March 15, 1998, he entered a note in the guestbook noting that he has 380 pictures, not 150, and has updated to "a Sony ID1 digital camera with better resoulion. Most of the old pictures have been replaced."

November 18, 1996 - Royal Tasmanian Botanical Garden

Among the most extreme cases of ecological calamity are those in which introduced plants or animals are brought into an environment in which there are no natural enemies. This site documents an opposite problem where the pest is native only to Australia (endemic). The oldest living trees in the Royal Tasmainian Botanical Garden are English species planted in 1828 as reminders of 'home' -- now the largest public collection of exotic conifers in the southern hemisphere -- are under attack by the fungal pest, Armillaria luteobubefina. Hopefully, this international appeal will raise enough money to help begin to address their serious problem.(***)

November 15, 1996 - Beyond Bio 101: The Transformation of Undergraduate Biology Education

This report (presented in entirety on the Web) represents the results of a survey of 220 colleges and universities have received more than $335 million from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. You can download "Beyond Bio 101" onto your computer and read it with your browser off-line. If you prefer to read the publication as a print document, order the free 88-page print version online at the site or write to: "Beyond Bio 101," Office of Communications, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, 4000 Jones Bridge Road, Chevy Chase, MD 20815-6789.(***) [Sorry, planning documents always get low ratings from me!!]

November 14, 1996 - Tropical Evergreen Forest of Malaysia -- removed from server

Sponsored by Malaysia OnLine WWW Server, this site has maps of forest canopy and management philosophy documents, but the major attraction of this site concern the different forest communities in Malaysia. Illustrated tours focus on the Upper Montane Forest, Montane Forest, Hill Forest, Lowland Forest, Agricultural Tree Cover, Peat Swamp Forest and Mangrove Forest. A nice virtual tour site with dramatic photography. (***1/2) former URL: http://www.mol.com/tropical/home.htm

November 13, 1996 - Promenade: The National Agricultural Library Image Database Project -apparently disconnected 10/97

This site is an index of photographic images (~250 x 300 pixel GIFs at full size) of botany prints from Curtis' Botanical Magazine (1797 to 1827), and plant pests and diseases provided by Dr. Randall Heatley of Michigan State University. The photos are accessible by database inquiry through text inquiry, common name (didn't work for me, but entering the same in text did), by genus and species. (A big hint: clear the query between searches!!) Over a thousand plant images and hundreds of plant pest photos are in the database. This is a cooperative effort of the University of Pittsburgh School of Library and Information Science, the National Agricultural Library (USDA) and Michigan State University Cooperative Extension Service. (***)

November 12, 1996 - Index Nominum Genericorum

Index Nominum Genericorum (ING) is a collaborative project of the International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT) and the Smithsonian Institution. The goal is to provide a compilation of generic names published for all organisms covered by the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature. According to information at the site, "the original intent of the ING was to bring all generic names of plants together in a single list to reveal homonymy between groups." As revisions became necessary, this idea of putting this on the Web rather than in printed edition seemed attractive. Therefore, this site is constantly under construction and most accurate for entries before 1990, which was the last major revision. Ellen Farr and Gea Zijlstra are the editors for this effort. (****)

November 11, 1996 - Botanical Electronic News (BEN)

If you follow the botany Newsgroups, you may have already chanced upon the Botanical Electronic News--a labor of love of Dr. A. Ceska of Victoria, B.C. Canada. BEN illustrates the potential of the Internet to address specific needs of the botanical community. This irregular periodical (distributed by listserv and the Newsgroup bionet.plants) is based on submitted articles, news from listservs and botanical activity in the Pacific Northwest. The latest issue contains contains one interesting article about the oldest living plant, Lomatia tasmanica (Proteaceae), which is found in only one population located in Tasmania, Australia. Based on C-14 dating, it is estimated to be in excess of 43,600 years old! This is three times older than the previously known oldest clone! Another favorite of mine is about the "fern seed" from 1995 (ferns of course don't have them!). Archived also [previously!] by gopher at gopher://vifa2.freenet.victoria.bc.ca/11/environment/Botany/ben.

November 8, 1996 - ASU Photosynthesis Center

If you want to learn about photosynthesis, this is the place to start. Links at the site lead to information about educational opportunities in the center for graduate and undergraduate students, Global Photosynthesis Resources (email addresses, publications and conferences) and a notable list of Educational Resources. This site includes a "Learn About Photosynthesis" page, "Why Study Photosynthesis?" and "Science Fair Project Suggestions." Links are labeled with the educational level of the students for which the site was designed--spanning from elementary school to college. This site is sponsored by the Center for the Study of Early Events in Photosynthesis, Arizona State University, funded by NSF, USDA and ASU. (****)

November 7, 1996 - Cells Alive!!

This truly multimedia site shows the potential of the Web to go where no textbook can. Although most of the site is not plant oriented, I feature it to show how adding movies and accompanying them with simple paradigms can stimulate both interest and enthusiasm--and ultimately good observational science. This site requires the user to have a recent browser and the fastest connection possible to really enjoy it (movies are usually about a megabyte or more, but it's a fast server!). Featured are microorganisms, antibody responses, viruses and cellular attack. This site is © James A. Sullivan. (****)

November 6, 1996 - National Gardening Association's Kids and Classrooms

This teaching site is aimed at the K-8 sequence providing "a forum for teachers, teacher educators, and community partners interested in using plants and gardens to enrich learning." This site includes links to their GrowLab Indoor Garden-Based Science Program (an NSF-funded program to stimulate scientific modes of thinking), Growing Ideas: A Journal of Garden-Based Learning (a teachers' newsletter), E-Mail Pals Growing Network, Growing Science Inquiry Professional Development Program (for educators), a Youth Garden Grant Program (deadline 11/15/96), a growing ideas catalog and links to other sites for growing minds. A great ideas site for students and educators organized by the NGA. (***1/2)

November 5, 1996 - Society for Growing Australian Plants

This site has sites for viewing and growing Australian plants, with a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions [and Answers!]), inforamtion about plant propagation, "Internet Resources...Relevant and Not!", The Australian Flora Foundation, coming events, a photo gallery (many excellent thumbnails and 450 x 300 jpeg photos of indigenous plants!) and Australian Plants online...a Quarterly Magazine. You can even say G'day through the site. This also has useful information about a wide variety of topics relating to individual plants (like the remarkable Banksias), fire tolerance, why plant Australian plants, and more. Those who live elsewhere in the world benefit from a virtual tour of Australian plants that makes seasoned botanists feel like beginning students again. Hosted by the SGAP. (****)

November 4, 1996 - American Bamboo Society

This site is all about bamboos. There is good written information, but not many photos. The site contains links to chapters in the Caribbean, and US chapers in Hawaii, the Northeast, Northern and Southern California, Pacific Northwest, Southeast, Southeast Coastal region, and Texas, and is highly visited. The site also presents an introduction to growing bamboos, what to do when bamboo flowers, bamboo mites, plant and product suppliers lists, bamboo collections around the world, a bookstore, a bamboo China service, other bamboo resources on the Internet, upcoming events, arts and crafts using bamboo, USDA quarantine requirements for bamboo, and contact information for people outside of the U.S.A. Site by ABS. (***)

November 1, 1996 - BIOPAK -- Software for Computing Plant Biomass

BIOPAK is a freeware site for the BIOPAK computer programs to calculate the biomass, area, height, length, or volume of plant components (leaves, branches, stem, crown, and roots) using existing prediction equations. This is particularly adapted for ecosystem level applications using equation libraries developed in the Pacific Northwest, northern Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas. This can be run with ($) or without (no $) technical support. Software developed by Donald Henshaw, Forestry Sciences Laboratory, Corvallis, Oregon.(***)

Past, past links (by date):

2006: January

2005: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December

2003: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December

2002: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December

2001: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December

2000: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December

1999: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December

1998: January*, February*, March*, April*, May*, June*, July, August, September, October, November, December   (*Leigh's links)

1997: January, February, March, April, May, June, September*, October*, November*, December*    (*Leigh's links)

1996: February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December

Or search by: Subject Index

http://www.ou.edu/cas/botany-micro/bot-linx/nov96.shtml