This site offers a large selection of pictures of Natural History objects, mostly British in origin. The images are presented to illustrate biodiversity and as an aid to identification. While pictures alone are generally NOT sufficient for identification, by showing different stages, states and views of the organisms more information can be offered than is available in field-guides. How to find your way around: BioImages is arranged in the normal biological classification (or at least my interpretation of it.) This is a hierarchical system with species grouped in genera, genera in families, families in orders and so on up to kingdoms and superkingdoms. 'Living Things' takes you to the top of the classification tree. If you just want to browse, Shortcuts takes you to a list of links to groups of organisms. You can then go directly to the group your are interested in. Then follow the links down to the species you want to see. On the left of each page in the classification hierarchy is a column of links to take you back up the hierarchy. Using these and the subtaxon links in the body of the page you can navigate sideways. This is a large site containing (Mar 06) 53,000 images depicting 4,600 species. The images include habitat shots, close-ups, macro shots and microscopy. Enjoy! ... [Information of the supplier]
Digital botanical illustration allows a fascinating close-up view of the plant world and, while scientifically based, it is also full of beauty for all to enjoy. Developed from the long tradition of botanical art, from the early herbals, through lithographs and engravings, to the meticulously hand-painted watercolours of today, this new digital work aims to combine the best of the old with the demands and technologies of the new. The background to this work was an award in 2003, from the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust, which part-funded a project to investigate digital techniques for botanical illustration. The first illustrations of this type were created in November 2003. Each composite illustration is a comprehensive plant portrait of a single taxon or plant species, showing the diagnostic and, where space allows, also the characteristic features of that plant. All parts and dissections within it are shown to scale by a metric scale bar, and where appropriate, the notable parts are colour referenced. In addition, each illustration contains a time bar showing the month/s of flowering, botanical symbols, and a title block, in which the currently accepted Latin plant name, author for the name, any common name/s and the accepted botanical family name are displayed. The works are largely, but not totally, photographic. ... [Information of the supplier, modified]
The Ecological Database of the British Isles has been constructed from a wide variety of sources by Dr Helen Peat and Professor Alastair Fitter at the University of York, with financial support from the British Ecological Society and the Natural Environment Research Council. It consists of data on over 1770 species of higher plants that occur in the British Isles, together with the bibliography of sources. This version has been realised by Dr Henry Ford. The data comprises information on taxonomy (family, genus, specific name, authority, and vernacular name, together with a synonomy), a suite of over 130 ecological and morphological characteristics, vice-county distribution in Britain, European distribution by country, mycorrhizal associations and fungal diseases. The data are obtained from the literature and therefore coverage varies greatly between species. Some data sets are incomplete at this stage. ... [Information of the supplier]
The database deals with the flora of the British Isles, comprising Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales), Ireland (Northern Ireland and Eire), the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands. In total 3525 species, subspecies and varieties placed in 166 families are included. All vascular plants (pteridophytes, gymnosperms and angiosperms) are included, as is traditional in British Floras. The descriptions of all the taxa can be found in the Description field of the Species module. They are brief diagnoses providing what I consider to be the most important characters, and they have been made as consistent and comparable as possible. We are very proud and grateful to have received the cooperation from more than 100 photographers, professional and amateur, who kindly provided us with their slides to illustrate the taxa. ... [Information of the supplier, modified]
The Flora of Northern Ireland web site provides a way of accessing plant species distribution data for Northern Ireland on a 10km x 10km grid square basis. Also included are images and descriptions of many of the c.1,100 species represented, but we are still lacking images for some species. The plant distribution records are held electronically in the Vascular Plant Database for Northern Ireland (VPDNI) which forms part of the database at the Centre for Environmental Data and Recording (CEDaR), Ulster Museum. ... [Information of the supplier]
You can find interesting plants everywhere in Britain and Ireland. This site is intended to help you identify them. On the following pages you will be presented with a questionnaire on the characteristics of the plant you are trying to identify. Fill in the form and press search, the computer will then try and identify the plant you have found. You may also like to use the system to obtain a check-list of plants from a particular habitat or perhaps find flowers of a particular colour to grow in your garden. Feel free to experiment, there are many uses for the system. ... [Information of the supplier]
Welcome to Herbaria United. This is the site where the herbaria in the UK and Ireland are working together to provide an on-line resource for anyone interested in plant collections. This site provides links to on-line UK herbarium resources and contains lots of useful information. There are on-line gazetteers, a handwriting query page, systematic look-up lists (e.g. Kent's List of Vascular Plants of the British Isles) and a collaborative database which ultimately aims to combine the data from all UK and Irish herbaria. We are keen to encourage everyone with a herbarium to become involved with the group and the website. ... [Information of the supplier]
Skye Flora presents a list of flowering plants and ferns recorded as growing wild on the Isle of Skye (North-West Scotland), with the plant names being linked to photos and descriptions. Among the aims of this site are: (a) To help people to identify wild plants found growing on the Isle of Skye, (b) To hopefully be of occasional use to anyone trying to identify a plant found elsewhere. ... [Information of the supplier, modified]
The Plant Crib is intended to help experienced botanists identify some of the more difficult groups of plants in Britain & Ireland. It does not cover the critical taxa Rubus, Taraxacum and Hieracium in any detail, but it does include many species and hybrids more fully than you are likely to encounter elsewhere. As part of a process to update the Plant Crib, Tim Rich has digitised the original book and made it available here as a series of pdf downloads. It is intended that these accounts will be extended and improved over the next few years. You are welcome to download these accounts for personal use, but please note that they are still copyright and may not be printed and sold or used for commercial purposes without the permission of the authors. ... [Information of the supplier]
The National Vegetation Database aims to collate all of the vegetation data that has been collected over the years in Ireland onto a single database and to make the maximum use possible of this valuable resource. The National Vegetation Database is a digital database stored in vegetation data management software called Turboveg. Turboveg was designed to store phytosociological vegetation data and is used by the European Vegetation Survey. The software contains multiple export functions to a range of analytical tools for vegetation data and can also be linked to an information management system that includes spatial data. ... [Information of the supplier, modified]