Vascular Plants Links Pg 1

  • Norris Whiston’s Fruit, Seeds, and Animals
    A 4 page document, 3 columns with 4 items per column, each illustrated with a colour photo by Norris and divided into categories (e.g., Conical or Upright Drupes Clusters, Hanging Drupe / Berry Chains) to facilitate quick ID. The text provides info on the use of fruits and seeds by animals. May be downloaded for individual use.
  • Norris Whiston’s Index & Keys for Trees & Shrubs of the Maritimes by Todd Boland (2012)
    Norris has prepared a detailed index and a variety of keys to aid in use of Todd Boland’s illustrated guide to over 230 native and introduced species of trees and shrubs in the Maritimes. Norris suggests attaching the 6 pages to the inside of the front cover. The index provides a quick reference to distinguishing different species within a taxon, e.g., under “hawthorne” he cites: hawthorn: 132 (6 or 8 lobes with large teeth); English hawthorn 134 (3-7 deep lobes); heather: woolly 40 (yellow); Scottish 41; pine barren golden 34;. His keys group species by Leaf Types, Flower Types, Seeds, Fragrance, Fall Colours, Bark and Twigs. NS Wild Flower folk who gave it a test-run found it very user-friendly.
    View/download Index & Keys
    View Review of Trees & Shrubs of the Maritimes
  • Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS) Canada: Biological Name Search
    Provided by the Canadian Biodiversity Information Facility. Enter a scientific or vernacular name to view the taxonomic hierarchy (Family, Order..) for a species and its “Taxonomic Credibility Rating“. It is a work in progress: see Some of the problems that CBIF will address.
  • A list of vascular plant species in the Nova Scotia flora
    A page on this website. The list was generated from Wild Species 2005: From the Status of Species in Canada Overview using the General Status Search Tool. it’s a place to start rather than an authoritative list.
  • Atlantic Canada Conservation Data Centre: Species Ranks 
    “The Atlantic CDC maintains comprehensive lists of plant and animal species, with a rarity rank and legal status for eachÉThrough the links you can access lists of species, including rare species, for each Atlantic province. Lists are organized by province and by taxonomic group. Newfoundland and Labrador are treated separately for ecological reasons.” For N.S. there are close to 2000 native and naturalized species listed; approx. 38% are naturalized species.
  • NatureServe Explorer
    is “An online encyclopedia of plants, animals, and ecosystems of the U.S. and Canada.. an authoritative source for information on more than 70,000 plants, animals, and ecosystems of the United States and Canada. Explorer includes particularly in-depth coverage for rare and endangered species.” The NatureServe Conservation Status of a species is given for individual states and provinces
  • The Plant List
    The Plant List is a working list of all known plant species. Version 1 aims to be comprehensive for species of Vascular plant (flowering plants, conifers, ferns and their allies) and of Bryophytes (mosses and liverworts). Collaboration between the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Missouri Botanical Garden enabled the creation of The Plant List by combining multiple checklist data sets held by these institutions and other collaborators. The Plant List provides the Accepted Latin name for most species, with links to all Synonyms by which that species has been known. It also includes Unresolved names for which the contributing data sources did not contain sufficient evidence to decide whether they were Accepted or Synonyms.
  • Angiosperm Phylogeny Website
    This website is maintained by Peter F. Stevens, Curator of the Missouri Botanical Gardens. Stevens is one of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group authors of the initial APG classification (1998) and its successor, APG II (2002). “At the web site, set up with Hilary Davis’s help, I marry morphological, anatomical and chemical variation patterns with the most recent well-supported estimates of phylogeny. The variation is placed in a strictly hierarchical context as far as is possible. The site is updated every six months or so, and generally follows the Angiosperm Phylogeny GroupsÕs consensus classification [APGIII], albeit a little more elaborated as the site can be kept more current both in terms of phylogenetic hypotheses and morphology..”
    See Also:

  • International Plant Names Index
    “The International Plant Names Index (IPNI) is a database of the names and associated basic bibliographical details of all seed plants, ferns and fern allies. Its goal is to eliminate the need for repeated reference to primary sources for basic bibliographic information about plant names. IPNI is the product of a collaboration between The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, The Harvard University Herbaria, and the Australian National Herbarium.”
  • The Taxonomicon
    Website maintained by Drs. S.J. Brands (Sheila), Universal Taxonomic Services, Zwaag, The Netherlands, with contributions from various organizations, indiividuals. It provides detailed classifcation hierarchies for all branches of life, easily searched and listed.
  • Tropicos
    A resource maintained by the Missouri Botanical Gardens. “Tropicos(R) was originally created for internal research but has since been made available to the world’s scientific community. All of the nomenclatural, bibliographic, and specimen data accumulated in MBG’s electronic databases during the past 25 years are publicly available here. This system has over 1.2 million scientific names and 4.0 million specimen records. “
  • Harvard University Herbarium Index of Botanical Specimens
    Search for specimen records; images are availale for many of them. Databases of botanists and publications are also available.
  • E.C. Smith Herbarium: Irving Biodiversity Collection.
    “The E.C. Smith Herbarium contains over 200,000 specimens, including vascular plants, bryophytes, and fungi. It is the largest herbarium in Atlantic Canada and the first Canadian herbarium to have digital database with scanned images of the collection.” Use the Search Page to find general information on plants growing in Nova Scotia and images from the herbarium holdings.
  • Digital Flora of Newfoundland and Labrador Vascular Plants 
    Hosted by Newfoundland and Labrador Provincial Museum, 29 contributing photographers.
  • Flora of North America
    “Flora of North America North of Mexico is a synoptic floristic account of the plants of North America north of Mexico: the continental United States of America (including the Florida Keys and Aleutian Islands), Canada, Greenland, and St. Pierre and Miquelon. The flora is intended to serve both as a means of identifying plants within the region and as a systematic conspectus of the North American flora. “
  • Plants Database
    A U.S.D.A. Natural Resources Conservation Service web site. Enter a species name in the Name Search box to bring up a Plants Profile page with information on classification, photographs, line drawings and web resources.
  • Fire Effects Information Service
    This USDA Forest Service site contains detailed, referenced information for many vascular plant, moss and lichen species.
  • The Linnean Society Collections Online
    Over 14,000 digital images of plant specimens in the Linnaean Herbarium can be accessed online. Users can zoom in to specific sections of the specimens for close examination. Information under each image has been taken directly from the herbarium sheets.
  • PlantSystematics.Org
    An image database with species classified by families according to Cronquist (1981), Takhtajan (1997) and the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (2006).
  • USDA – APHIS — Concordance of Family Names
    This University of Maryland.N.Y. Botanical Garden site lists family names according to APG-II, Cronquist, Dahlgren, Reveal, Stevens, Takhtajan, Thorne and gives the reference for particular family names.
  • Tracheophyte Checklist of New England
    Tracheophytes are vascular plants (i,e, land plants not including mosses). This list was prepared by Arthur Haines of the New England Wild Flower Society;it “presents those names that will tentatively be used in an upcoming flora of New England.”
  • PhyloCode
    A formal set of rules governing phylogenetic nomenclature; Draft. Read the Preface to get a sense of what this is about, how it embodies and diverges from existing nomenclature systems.
  • Ferns of southwest Nova Scotia
    Alain Beliveau, author. A set of keys with diagrams. MTRI, Nova Forest Alliance.
  • botanicus.org
    “Botanicus is a freely a freely accessible, Web-based encyclopedia of digitized historic botanical literature from the Missouri Botanical Garden Library.” It includes, for example, complete volumes of Rhodora from 1899 to 2004. Each volume can be read online or downloaded – nany classic papers about the N.S. by M.L. Fernald therein!