Research Guides: Botany: Suggested Websites

Ethnobotany - Hawaii and the Pacific

Bishop Museum's Hawaii Ethnobotany Online Database
Canoe Plants of Ancient Hawaii
Plants of Southeast Asia
Specialty Crops for Pacific Islands
(Agroforestry.net) Book is available in the library: Hawaii Pacific SB87.P16 S64 2011
Traditional Pacific Island Crops
Plants and Tools Used for Building Canoes

Native Plants of Hawaii and the Pacific

Cook Islands Biodiversity Database
The primary funding for the Project and its database is from the Cook Islands Government.
Native Plants Hawaii
NPH is a joint project between Kapiʻolani Community College (KCC) and Leeward Community College (LCC), funded by a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Hawaiian Native Plant Propagation Database
College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, UH Manoa
Moorea Digital Flora Project
Andy Murdock, University of California, Berkeley
Native Hawaii Plant Genera
UH Manoa, Botany Department
Ngā Tipu o Aotearoa - New Zealand Plants
Plants and Environments of the Marshall Islands [link forthcoming]

Invasive Species

Biocontrol of Forest Weeds
Hawaii's High-Profile Invasive Species
Hawaiian Ecosystems at Risk Project (HEAR)
HawaiiRREA's YouTube Channel
Videos from the Hawaii Forestry Extension Program at CTAHR, University of Hawaii at Manoa
Hawaiian Alien Plant Studies
Invasive Plant Atlas of the United States
Noxious weeds in the US - Searchable database
Pacific Island Ecosystems at Risk
Weeds of Hawaii

Botanical Names/Families/Taxonomy

PLANTS Database
USDA's database that provides standardized information about the vascular plants, mosses, liverworts, hornworts, and lichens of the U.S. and its territories.
The Plant List: Kew Botanical Gardens
This is a working list of all known plant species with 1.2+ million scientific plant names of species rank of which 350,699 are accepted species names.
World Checklist of Selected Botanical Families: Kew
Provides the latest peer reviewed and published opinions on accepted scientific names of plants, which includes 173 seed plant families.
The International Plant Names Index (IPNI)
Contains names and associated basic bibliographical details of seed plants, ferns and lycophytes.
AlgaeBase
Information on terrestrial, marine and freshwater algae.
Encyclopedia of Life
An online reference source that is in the process of creating a webpage for all the 1.8 million known species on the planet.
Integrated Taxonomic Informaiton System
Taxonomic information on plants, animals, fungi, and microbes of North America and the world.
NCBI Entrez Taxonomy Homepage
Taxonomic information for about 10% of species on the planet.
Tree of Life
Provides information about biodiversity, the characteristics of different groups of organisms, and their evolutionary history. Pages are linked one to another hierarchically, in the form of the evolutionary tree of life.
Tropicos
Nomenclatural, bibliographic, and specimen data for plants.

Erythrina sandwicensis

Image From: Forest & Kim Starr

Hawaiian Ethnobotany ONLINE Database

Hawaiian Ethnobotany Online Database This link opens in a new window
Web site and reference information provided and maintained by Bishop Museum. Browse cultural and scientific information about 145 plants commonly used in traditional Hawaiian culture. Search by Hawaiian names or scientific names.

Native Plants Hawai'i
NPH is a comprehensive and searchable knowledgebase that seeks to promote the understanding and use of native Hawaiian plants.

Passiflora tarminiana

Image From: Forest & Kim Starr

What is Taxonomy?

TAXONOMY is the classification of organisms based on natural and evolutionary relationships, which are decided on with morphological and physiological similarities.

These natural relationships are ordered in a hierarchical system:

Kingdom

Phylum

Class

Order

Family

Genus

Species

Example:

Apple Guave (Psidium guajava L.)

Plantae

Magnoliophyta

Magnoliopsida

Myrtales

Myrtaceae

Psidium

Psidium guajava L.