The Pollinator Partnership is a fascinating website that deals with the role of pollinators.
The Pollinator Partnership’s mission is to protect pollinators, critical to food and ecosystems, through conservation, education, and research. Signature initiatives include the NAPPC (North American Pollinator Protection Campaign), National Pollinator Week, and the Ecoregional Planting Guides.
You can also download the beautiful poster shown below.
If you have ever sought the meaning behind the scientific name of a plant there is an easy website to use called Botanary (botanical dictionary) to look them up. It’s part of the gardening site “Dave’s Garden”. Keep it handy on your smartphone to use when guiding plant walks and someone says, “That’s a long scientific name. What does it mean?”
For the website Click Here.
Some of us spend time in Florida during the winter (I don’t know why since there is some much winter fun to be had here) but if you do you might be interested in a blog and website just for Florida wildflowers. The Florida Wildflower Foundation is doing a lot of good things to educate the public about their plants. For the blog CLICK HERE. From there you can go to the website. – Steve Young
CLICK HERE to see a movie of all the state flowers and afterward you can click on a list of states to see the flower for that state. Quick, what is the state flower of New York?
The UBC Botanical Garden in Vancouver produces this website with plants from all over the world. The accompanying text is sometimes pretty long so a lot of work goes into each entry. CLICK HERE for the website.
The Plant Trivia app touts it as, “a simple game to help you learn 200 plant names and pictures. The game is pretty simple: You start with 60 seconds on the clock. Each correct answer is worth 5 points on the first try, 3 on the second, 2 on the third, and 0 on the last try. When you’re done, save your score and share the results on Facebook.”
Mostly flowers are shown but other plant parts as well. Sometimes the choices are very different from each other. I did pretty well but my son still has the highest score. I’m getting rusty or all those field trips with him have paid off! – Steve Young
A screen shot. What's the correct answer?
Last year I wrote a post about plant identification apps for the iPhone. Since then it has consistently been one of the top two most popular posts on this blog. That tells me that the public is very interested in having apps that help them identify the plants they are seeing in the wild but so far there have only been a handful of apps available and none that are very good. The latest one I have seen is a Apple app of a plant quiz (Plant Trivia) that is fun but includes plants from the whole world which can be challenging. The iBird app is an example of a very interesting one for birds that shows the usefulness of these apps. I think developers would do well to consult with some of our regional botanical experts to develop useful plant identification apps that the public can use to help them enjoy their local flora. Turning Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide into an app might be a good start. – Steve Young
The iBird App
A website is now available for the New Manual of Vascular Plants of Northeastern United States and Adjacent Canada. Visit this website to find out more about this exciting project which is being organized by Rob Naczi of the New York Botanical Garden.
Meadowlark Newsletter Articles Winter 2010
Editor’s Message – Where Did the Year Go?
Review of the November Grassland and Meadows Preserves Meeting
Heartful Thanks to the Boy and Girl Scouts
Girl Scout Gold Award Project
Eagle Scout Project at the Hempstead Plains
Review of the Annual Fall Hempstead Plains Poetry Writing and Painting Workshop
“Walk the Plains” Event Hosted by Friends of Hempstead Plains and Nassau County
Information on Biotrays, Biodegradable Trays Filled with Clean Soil and Appropriate Seeds
Upcoming Programs
Afternoon Walks Fridays at 3:30 PM: April 29, May 13, May 20, June 3, June 17, July 8
Weekend Volunteer Community Workdays Saturdays 9 to 12: April 30, May 14, May 21, June 4, June 18, July 9
For more information and to join the Friends go to their website. CLICK HERE.
From theplantlist.org website:
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.
For the website CLICK HERE.
For New York’s flora we recommend following the taxonomy of the New York Flora Atlas – Steve Young
New York Flora Association Blog 