Wild Flower Society to get $2.49 million
Great news for botany --- New England Wild Flower Society has been awarded a $2.49 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop GO BOTANY! - a multi-faceted program to bring Botany into the 21st Century. Included in this grant is the construction of three online keys for the identification of all native plant species in New England. These keys will allow people to go into the field with a hand-held device instead of several very heavy books. This online setup will serve the whole of the United States since it sets a framework for organizations in other regions to construct comprehensive botanical guides which will interface with this one.
Researching the taxa and building the computer models are William Brumback (Conservation Director at New England Wild Flower Society), Dr. Elizabeth Farnsworth (Author, Ecologist, and Educator, MA), Arthur Haines (New England Wild Flower Society Research Botanist), and Sidharth Koul (New England Wild Flower Society Programmer Analyst). Key partners for research, development, and testing include the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, New Haven, CT; the Montshire Museum of Science, Norwich, VT; and the Chewonki Foundation, Wiscasset, ME.
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Carol Stocker has been writing about gardening for the Boston Globe for 30 years. She has won the top newspaper writing award of the Garden Writer's Association of American three times. Her newest book is "The Boston Globe Illustrated New England Gardening Almanac."
this is indeed great news! GO BOTANY! will be very convenient for people who find unfamiliar plants on nature walks as well as in their own backyard, and of course for the many gardeners who are using more native plants in their landscapes.