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The Plant People of Nature Folks

The activities within the group, in no particular order, are:

1. Creating a membership
2. Publishing a newsletter
3. Making phenology studies
4. Creating regional plant occurrence checklists
5. Conducting tours
6. Managing special wild-plant-emphasis trails
7. Selling books
8. Selling checklists
9. Selling maps (especially of frost periords and suitability zones)
10. Selling related software
11. Encouraging plant related art
12. Maintaining a web-site
13. Holding an annual conference
14. Encouraging and selling photographs
15. Helping to develop a herbarium
16. Reviewing plant and plant ecology related books
17. Developing local plant identification aids and a training course and walkway
18. Writing and developing books and CD-ROMs
19. Creating a game and regional contest related to plant identification
20. Sponsoring photograph display events
21. Creating a book or information system on plant and insect relations
22. Mapping wild plant locations with GPS locations
23. Sponsoring research on all aspects of the region's The Plant People with overhead gains
24. Participating in comprehensive modeling effort, simulation and optimization
25. Developing thoughtful papers on plant diversity; viability of populations; plants in ecosystems; plant-to-plant, plant-to-animal, and plant-to-geology relationships
26. Working to achieve knowledge of and engaging in practical efforts to manage fires as they effect The Plant People
27. Assisting in baseline descriptions
28. Promoting special studies of the roots and plants in the root-zone of The Plant People
29. Developing cost-effective rare-species recovery plans
30. Encouraging contributions of time, money, and knowledge to wildland studies
31. Encouraging ecological tours throughout the world
32. Promoting interest of minorities in The Plant People and their systems
33. Promoting and developing a computer wild plant information system and web site.
34. Working with the Fire Force in describing effects of wildfires.

Dr. A. Ballard Massey, Virginia Botanist, who built the first state herbarium to which the current one has been added.

Other ideas include garden tours, gardens with places (alcoves) for many people to sit and rest, perhaps with tea service, expert systems for plants and plant diseases and pests, a county-fair weekend presentations of topics, publications and CDs, e-commerce with many suppliers, and a schools resulting in special honors, awards, and knowledge competition. Working with AOL or others for percentages on book sales.

Work with field identification aids will be important (e.g., Manual of vascular plants of Northeastern United States and adjacent Canada by Henry A. Gleason and Arthur Cronquist (second edition 1991 and Newcomb's Wildflower guide : an ingenious new key system for quick, positive field identification of the wildflowers, flowering shrubs and vines of Northeastern and North Central North America by Lawrence Newcomb for teaching the native plant society members field identification(1977)

and The Gleason and Cronquist Manual and Newcomb's Field Guide are both widely used at the University of Vermont. You might also want to consider the new flora by Dennis Magee and Harry Ahles. It's hot off the press, covers only New England, and is illustrated (unlike Gleason and Cronquist).

and Illustrated Companion to Gleason and Cronquist's Manual : Illustrations of the Vascular Plants of Northeastern United States and Adjacent Canada by Noel H. Holmgren, Patricia K. Holmgren, Henry A. Gleason

See Stein's Virtual Herbarium for ideas.

See also Appalachian Flora and Scenic Vistas
ISBN: 1-893961-06-0 , a CD from
3510 Indian Meadow Dr.
Blacksburg, VA 24060

Key links are likely with the Plant Conservation Alliance, Bayscapes program of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay Bayscapes program, NRCS Backyard Conservation Program (1-888-LANDCARE), National Wildlife Federations Backyard Habitats Program, Delaware Native Plant Society, Maryland Native Plant Society,and the Virginia Native Plant Society

See also http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/units/sel/bio/botany.html

Exotic species web sites are:
http://nas.er.usgs.gov/ (the Gainesville site)
http://www.smslrwma.org/
http://www.aphis.usda.gov/ppq/weeds/weedhome.html
http://www.blm.gov/weeds/
http://endeavor.des.ucdavis.edu/weeds/
http://www.aphis.usda.gov/oa/nbci/nbci.html
http://www.wam.umd.edu/~mct/Plants/poisonous.html
http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/
http://refuges.fws.gov/NWRSFiles/InternetResources/weeds.html

From Bill Berry, Wildlife Biologist, Wildlife Management Branch Head,
Environmental Security, Wildlife Management Branch, Marine Corps Base, Camp Pendleton, CA 92055-5008

Grasses of the West...sources:

Manual of the Grasses of the U.S. A.S. Hitchcock (2 Volumes). 1971. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0486227170/thewildlifebiolo/ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0486227189/thewildlifebiolo/

Grasses. An identification Guide. Brown, Lauren. 1979. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0395628814/qid=967217653/sr=1-2/002-9502939-5289644

Field Guide to the grasses rushes and sedges of the US. Knobel. 1977 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/048623505X/qid%3D967217612/002-9502939-5289644

Weeds of the West. Tom Whitson. 1996 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0941570134/thewildlifebiolo/ (August 2000)

Wetland guides: 1) Audubon Guide series on wetlands.
2) Hotchkiss, Neil. Common Marsh, Underwater, and Floating-Leaved Plants of the US and Canada.
3) Newmaster, Steven G. 1997. Wetland Plants of Ontario. Lone Pine Publishing. ISBN 1-55105-059-5.
4) Prescott, G. W. 1980. How to Know the Aquatic Plants. Second Edition. Wm. C. Brown Co., Dubuque, Iowa.
5) Combs, D. L. and R. D. Drobney. 1991. Aquatic and Wetland Plants of Missouri. Missouri Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, Columbia, MO.

See also The vegspec program has been around for awhile. Just something to be thinking about in terms of:

• web-based expert systems,
• restoration projects,
• erosion control projects,
• integration with some of the datasets we already have i.e. RPI, rainfall, temperature, etc...

The site for the Flora of North America, a long-term National Science Foundation project is available.

An example of a site planned for special plants and plant communities is now available.

An important gardening site is Virtual Garden.

Grasses of Louisiana, contains numerous keys and illustrations covering species in Graminae found in Louisiana and the southeastern United States, especially the evil Panicum species. You can order the book for $30.00 on the author's web page.

A good wildflower identification web page is called Wildflowers of the Southeastern United States. It contains umerous jpegs of plants found in the southeast.

See medicinal plants and potential tour at >Subject: A New Centre for Medicinal Plants Conservation and Research

Centre for Medicinal Plants Research (CMPR), Kottakkal ? 676 503, Kerala, India.

A New Centre for Medicinal Plants Conservation and Research.

A new centre has come into existence under the Arya Vaidya Sala, Kottakkal for the conservation of medicinal plants. Work on field, in vitro and seed gene banks are already on. The centre will concentrate on the rare, endangered and threatened medicinal plants of South India. Laboratories for medicinal plant taxonomy, pharmacognosy, phytochemistry, pharmacology and plant tissue culture propagation are being set up. The laboratory will be fully operational by the middle of 2003. CMPR would like to establish linkages with organizations involved in Medicinal Plants Conservation and Research. We are looking forward for collaboration in various areas. Please respond by reply e-mail. (Dr. P.N. Ravindran), Coordinating Director, Centre for Medicinal Plants Research Satabdi Nagar, Changuvetty, Kottakkal, Malappuram - 676 503 Kerala, India Ph: (0493) 743430,

E-mail: avscmpr@yahoo.co.in / pn_rnair@hotmail.com /pnravi2003@yahoo.co.in

The enterprise estimates:

Estimated development costs.............$35,000

Estimated profits (after the 5th year)...$90,000

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This Web site is maintained by R. H. Giles, Jr.
Last revision November 15, 2000.