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A Plant by Any Other Name:
GRIN Web Site Updated and Enhanced
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The revised web site for the Germplasm
Resources Information Network (GRIN)
now includes a new segment on
noxious weeds, including this one
named, dyer's woad.
(K9319-1)
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Need to find up-to-date scientific
names for economically important vascular plants—without spending a small
fortune for a current reference book? Agricultural Research Service experts in
taxonomy, or the official naming of living things, have the solution: a newly
improved, user-friendly, multilingual web site.
"At the site, interested people can find the correct common and scientific
names of plants as well as information about their uses. The information was
garnered during more than 2 decades of nomenclatural research on economic
plants by ARS taxonomists," says ARS botanist John H. Wiersema. He worked
with former ARS taxonomist Blanca León at the Systematic Botany and
Mycology Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, on developing and upgrading the
site. The web address is http://www.ars-grin.gov/npgs/tax.
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The revised web site for the Germplasm
Resources Information Network (GRIN) now
includes a new segment on noxious weeds,
including this one named leafy spurge.
(K2601-2)
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"The web site adds some
important improvements to the Germplasm Resources Information Network (GRIN)
taxonomy area, including a new web page devoted to enhancing and expanding the
World Economic Plants: A Standard Reference. The 749-page reference was
published in 1999," says Wiersema.
"So far, the web pages devoted to economic plants and their uses—a
subset of GRIN taxonomy—comprise scientific information on 9,356 of the
most important plant species from 2,616 genera and 290 families," he says.
The economic coverage includes plants or plant products that are traded,
regulated, or otherwise used in international commerce. Many plants important
to regional commerce of larger countries are also included as well as plants
with recognized potential for widespread economic use or for negative economic
impact, like weeds and poisonous plants. |
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The revised web site for the Germplasm
Resources Information Network( GRIN) now
includes a new segment on noxious weeds,
including this one named yellow starthistle.
(K8881-8)
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Several search engines allow users
to key in criteria like genus, common name, or economic use—such as food,
fiber, forage, timber, fuel, spice, or genetic, medicinal, ornamental, and
social uses.
Another advantage of the web site over the book is the user's ability to search
for a plant by country, state, or geographical distribution. Users can produce
a condensed report that's similar to the book's format. Or they can click on
links to more detailed information on each species, such as scientific and
common names, synonyms, native distribution, and botanical uses. Each name has
a unique identifying code number, a reference to the original description, and
other pertinent taxonomic literature.
"Over 75,000 literature citations are cross-referenced to our
economic-plants names alone and over 175,000 to all our names," Wiersema
says. "And we have developed Spanish and Portuguese versions of many of
our web pages, with French and German ones on the way."
Another new web page provides access to a specialized segment of the GRIN
database: The noxious-weed site lists the names of thousands of weeds and has
links to the USDA-ARS "Invaders" database and other federal weed
documents.
"Links connect users to other available on-line state noxious-weed
documents or regulatory agencies," says Wiersema. "Several state
sites have drawings or pictures of the weeds and other information of interest
to scientists, gardeners, and farmers." The new web pages are part of the
GRIN database, which includes over 62,000 botanical names of mainly economic
plants.
Other linked taxonomy pages access GRIN data on federally and internationally
regulated, threatened, and endangered plants and on vascular plant family and
generic names from throughout the world.
The site is well used. "In October 2000, over 70,000 reports were provided
to users of GRIN taxonomy, so it is obviously of great use to workers in
agriculture, commerce, regulation, and other fields," Wiersema says.
"By tapping into our web site, they can all be assured they are talking
about the same plant."—By
Hank Becker,
Agricultural Research Service Information Staff.
This research is part of Plant, Microbial, and Insect Genetic Resources,
Genomics, and Genetic Improvement, an ARS National Program (#301) described on
the World Wide Web at http://www.nps.ars.usda.gov.
John H. Wiersema is with the
USDA-ARS Systematic Botany and Mycology
Laboratory, Bldg. 011A, BARC-West, Beltsville, MD 20705-2350; phone (301)
504-9181, fax (301) 504-5810. |
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"A Plant by Any Other Name: GRIN Web Site Updated
and Enhanced" was published in the
March 2001
issue of Agricultural Research magazine.
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