Some notes about online keys
(back to entrance)(keys for kids)
The vascular Flora of China
The link to this online key (at Harvard) will open in a new window.Use the lefthand menu: on the levels of family and genus there is a complete system of traditional dichotomous keys for the vascular plants of China (makes you want to explore it in situ!)
The linking facilities of hypermedia have been applied to support the user in the navigation of the key: click on the number and you will be scrolled to the proper next step. If you start getting the feeling you're on the wrong track, there are links to help you backtrack. This should take care of the common error of making the right choice but continuing at the wrong number anyway. There are beauty spots on the arrangement: with my setup (Netscape) the scrolling tends to cut off the top third or so of the line you arrive at (OK: with Explorer this doesn't happen). And the scrolling doesn't work for keys shorter than a screenful.
This project, by its completeness and by its very traditionalism with the most moderate employment of the hypermedial facilities, reads as For Real - not technology testing but providing an online tool for botanists. The organization and all texts are the Real Thing - but you have to know your botany, this is hardly for novice users, and the devoted apprentice will need resources by the side.
Omnicyber TaxKey to vascular plant families
The link will again open in another window (THE other window if you still have the Flora of China open). This online key covers the family level, only. What you get is two panes on the left side - one for each choice in a couplet - and a central pane where you can call up drawings of the relevant characters by clicking on the links on the left side, if you are uncertain about the meaning of a character.This is a NGO project (small funds or none at all) - in my reading it carries out an idea about how hypermedia could be used for educational purposes in botanical taxonomy. The drawings are very instructive (perhaps more so than Nature herself). So there is some creative use of the hypermedial facilities in this key, providing support to the novice to botanical terminology.
It is, however, quite frustrating as a key. For one thing, you are presented with long lists of characters at each step almost all the way through a run. It's not clear if these are several alternative options, allowing you to choose according to the parts present in your sample, or if you need to have information on all the characters at each step (I'm grateful to Malcolm Storey for this point).
- Cotyledons usually 2, lateral
- leaves usually net-veined, with stipules or without stipules, alternate, opposite or whorled;
- flowers with parts in 2s, 4s or 5s or parts numerous;
- primary root-system (taproot) usually persistent, branched.
- Also, pollen grains usually not monocolpate;
- vascular bundles of the stem usually arranged in a ring;
- bracteoles (when present) usually 2, lateral.
So I see this project as well-intentioned (and a lot of work on a low budget) but probably too frustrating for the target group of learners that it seems to be intended for - particularly for making real identifications. It might be educational to use it for dry runs - though the invisibility of the taxonomic structure is a drawback there. Well, interesting to see this adaptation of a paper key to the hypermedium done.
Reticule Flora Search: online identification
Or take a look at the front page that tells you a bit about this trial system put up by Quentin Groom, for the explicit purpose of using the facilities of the medium to provide an aid to plant identification. At the same site there is a trial system for identification of Euphrasias by similar principles.This is a very practical, "quick and dirty" approach, asking you a number of basic questions through a one-page web form, using radio buttons and menus of alternatives - always including an "I don't know" option. Questions range from "technicalities" about the form of leaves and flower to questions about habitat and month of flowering. There are no ambitions to make taxonomic structure very explicit, but a glossary for the botanical vocabulary.
When you submit the Flora Search form you get a list of suggestions, sorted according to fit and abundance. I have found it fairly easy to do a "targeted dry run" - and get the species I have been thinking of among the top suggestions. That may of course be because I've used easy targets. It doesn't help a lot with my Mystery Rosette (about which I am beginning to entertain some suspicions, at last).
There are images for some of the taxa (the collection is fairly incomplete, I think) - which is of course what you want at the next stage. WITH a full set of images this flora search would be a quite useful strategy for plant identification.
Which reminds me
- of Malcolm Storey's BioImages "virtual field guide" which doesn't have a key, but TONS of useful images, and a taxonomically organized site structure. When I have some vague idea what my finding might be, the first places on the Web that I check are BioImages and Den Virtuella Floran at Riksmuséet - which is also a taxonomically organized site, with good search facilities and excellently helpful texts, crosslinked between confusable taxa. The keys of Den Virtuella Floran are, on the other hand, pretty well hidden away. And they're just ordinary "paper keys" in an inconvenient html format - not even indented. There are links to all the endpoint taxa, that's all. I don't think the keys were the main point of this project.
