for immediate release

PlantCollections Unlocks Records at 20 Botanic Gardens

Announcing www.PlantCollections.org

Media Only:
Julie McCaffrey
(847) 835-8213
jmccaffrey@chicagobotanic.org

GLENCOE, Ill. (June 24, 2008)—The Chicago Botanic Garden, in conjunction with 29 partners, announced at the American Public Gardens Association (APGA) Annual Conference today the launch of PlantCollections.org, a gateway into a treasure trove of scientific information about the living plant collections at international botanic gardens and arboreta. The portal will give scientists a better understanding of the genetic diversity of plants around the world and could play an important international role in plant conservation. Currently, 16 institutions in the United States and 4 international institutions have contributed data. The project aims to provide access to the plant records of over 50,000 taxa contained in institutions around the world. Previous attempts to create similar querying systems of botanical garden databases have been unsuccessful, in part because the technology was expensive to implement and maintain.

The Chicago Botanic Garden worked in conjunction with the North American Plant Collections Consortium (NAPCC), a program of the APGA, the University of Kansas Biodiversity Research Center and Natural History Museum, Morphbank at Florida State University School of Computational Sciences, Google Base, Beijing Botanical Garden, BG-BASE, Inc., BG-BASE (UK) Ltd. and Pathfinder Development with funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS) and private donors.

"PlantCollections.org is the first internet application designed to serve the information needs of scientists, students and gardeners alike using spreadsheets, maps and images" said Boyce Tankersley, project director and director of living plant documentation at the Chicago Botanic Garden. "The data for the project come from leading botanic garden and arboreta plant record databases, herbaria, seed repositories, DNA banks and image repositories from around the world."

The need for PlantCollections was pointed out in a September 2004 NAPCC report when Dr. Peter Raven, President of the Missouri Botanical Garden, stated "…[NAPCC] need(s) to develop an efficient computer-based system for recording the holdings of gardens, and preferable gardens throughout the world. Without knowing who has what … the maintenance and assembly of collections cannot be efficient, and in fact most of what botanical gardens do is wasted or replicated effort, unknown to others and generally not available."

"The PlantCollections project is creating a worldwide virtual community of users that is far broader and more impactful than the 29 project partners," said Christopher Dunn, project co-director and Director of the Lyon Arboretum.

The data on the portal was chosen to meet the needs of eight audiences known to request information about living collections, including botanic garden curators and senior management, taxonomists, horticulturists, educators and students, conservation scientists, ecologist, weed scientists and botanic garden and arboreta visitors. Long term, the results of this project will significantly improve the primary activity of botanic gardens and arboreta: collecting, studying, and conserving living plants. Improved access to information about rare and endangered species within living collections will have positive impacts on both in situ and ex situ conservation efforts.

Some examples of uses for the portal include finding information about a plant by scientific name, common name, genus or family name; finding a technical expert on a group of plants or a plant sciences technique; create a map of all of the sites in nature that a species or group of species has been collected by botanic gardens; finding images, documented true to name, of flowers, leaves, fruit, fall color, habits; finding a commercial source for a plant species (assuming at least one of the participants obtained the plant from a nursery); creating a map of all of the botanic gardens and arboreta that grow a specific plant or group of plants; locating herbarium, DNA, seed or pickled plant specimens; and finding a reference on flower color, leaves, fruit and fall color for a particular plant. Users can download data to their computer in a spreadsheet format; find the latitude, longitude, elevation, slope, soil, habitat and biological associates where a plant was growing when collected; know what plants of conservation concern are currently in cultivation and where they are; and locate plants that originated from a specific continent, country, state/province, county, park or protected area.

The NAPCC of the APGA includes 42 botanic gardens and arboreta committed to long-term curation and care for plant collections with significant taxonomic, horticultural, conservation, agronomic and ecologic importance. PlantCollections will help to prevent overlap in collections from already diminished populations and identify gaps that still remain in collections worldwide.

Technological disparities between institutions and lack of institutional resources were among the foremost challenges to the project. 23 NAPCC members use many different database management applications and institutions that do offer data on the Internet provide different fields of data and reference different taxonomic names. The Kansas Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center and Pathfinder Development helped to develop the software application for the project.

Morphbank at Florida State University School of Computational Sciences contributed software and technical support and are the hosts for the images in the portal. Google Base provides free data housing, ease of distribution of information on the World Wide Web, ease of use, and control of content for the project.
Participating institutions include the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, Beijing Botanical Garden, Chenshen Botanical Garden, Chicago Botanic Garden, Ganna Walska Lotusland, Huntington Art Collections, Library and Botanical Gardens, Landis Arboretum, Mt. Cuba Center Inc., Missouri Botanical Garden, Nanjing Sun Yat Sen Memorial Botanical Garden, Norfolk Botanical Garden, North Carolina Arboretum, San Francisco Botanical Garden, Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, Scott Arboretum of Swarthmore College, Shanghai Botanical Garden, The Morton Arboretum, UC Davis Arboretum, United States National Arboretum and University of Washington Botanic Gardens.

"The creation of this tool would not have been possible without the support of the IMLS National Leadership Program, an anonymous donor, Chicago Botanic Garden, American Public Gardens Association, University of Kansas Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center, Morphbank at Florida State University School of Computational Sciences, BG-BASE, Inc. and BG-BASE (UK) Ltd, Pathfinder Development and the support of fifteen American and five international botanic gardens," said Tankersley.
For more information, visit www.PlantCollections.org.

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Editors, please note: The Chicago Botanic Garden's newsroom is online at www.chicagobotanic.org/pr. For digital images, contact Julie McCaffrey at (847) 835-8213 or at jmccaffrey@chicagobotanic.org.

The Chicago Botanic Garden, one of the green treasures of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County, is a 385-acre living plant museum featuring 23 distinct display gardens surrounded by lakes, as well as a prairie and woodlands. With events, programs and activities for all ages, the Garden is open every day of the year, except Dec. 25. Admission is free; select event fees apply. Parking is $15; free for members. On Tuesdays, senior citizens age 62 and older pay just $7 for parking. The Garden is located at 1000 Lake Cook Road in Glencoe, Ill. Visit www.chicagobotanic.org, or call (847) 835-5440 for seasonal hours, images of the Garden and commuter transportation information.

The Chicago Botanic Garden is managed by the Chicago Horticultural Society. It opened to the public in 1972 and is home to the Joseph Regenstein, Jr. School of the Chicago Botanic Garden, offering a broad array of adult classes in plant science, landscape design and gardening arts. Through the Division of Plant Science and Conservation, Garden scientists work on plant conservation, research and environmental initiatives that have global impact. The Center for Teaching and Learning brings the wonder of nature and plants to children, teens and teachers. The Garden's Horticultural Therapy and Community Gardening programs provide nationally recognized community outreach and service programs. The Garden is also breaking new ground in urban horticulture and jobs training through a 15-acre project in the North Lawndale neighborhood of Chicago called Windy City Harvest. The Chicago Botanic Garden is accredited by the American Association of Museums and is a member of the American Public Gardens Association (APGA). In 2006, the Chicago Botanic Garden received the Award for Garden Excellence, given yearly by the APGA and Horticulture magazine to a public garden that exemplifies the highest standards of horticultural practices and has shown a commitment to supporting and demonstrating best gardening practices.