With this Web site from Florida Plants Online, you don't need to be a botanist to tell poison ivy apart from its benign look-alike, Virginia creeper. Photos and detailed identification tips, as well as numerous links to additional information, help readers learn how to avoid "one of nature's most dreaded plants." The site also includes information on how to diagnose a poison ivy reaction...

The Jepson Flora Project (Jepson Herbarium, University of California at Berkeley) maintains an updated checklist and distribution maps of plant taxa in California. This information was first published as The Jepson Manual (named after the original author) and is now an extensively illustrated guide to California's plants, refined and updated by over 200 authors. The Manual includes detailed...

Published by the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum (BGBM), Berlin-Dahlem, this Web site serves as on online guide to lichen identification. Users can choose from articulated identification keys for a large number of taxa, or follow links to keys organized by geographical region. There is also an interactive lichen identification database. The Web site has been recently updated to include a key...

This Florida Museum of Natural History of Web site provides a convenient, centralized clearinghouse for information on the Melastomataceae. Created to promote research on this common yet understudied family of tropical plants, the Melastomataceae of the World Web site provides images and background information, a phylogenetic overview, links to related research projects, contact information for...

Created and maintained by Thomas Schoepke of the Institute of Pharmacy at Greifswald University, this site may prove useful to both botanists and biology students. Behind the straightforward interface is a database of some 2,000 high-quality images of plants, mainly from Europe, Costa Rica, Japan, and the Galapagos Islands. Users can browse the images by four geographic galleries or by plant...

While traveling through distant (and not-so-distant) lands for the primary purpose of discovering new plant species may not seem like everyone's cup of tea, this fine website pays homage to those very intrepid souls who devoted to their life to that pursuit. The site is not solely devoted to "plant explorers", although visitors will want to begin by browsing through the sections that introduce...

This informative website on succulent plants was created by plant enthusiast and cancer researcher Dr. Richard Hodgkiss. The site contains many nice images, and concise information sections on How to Grow Cacti and Succulents, Propagation, Pests and Diseases, Growing from Seed, and more. The site provides information about Asclepiads, Haworthias, Peperomias, and Sempervivums as well. The website...

Did you know that we depend on flowering plants for much of our food, clothing, and medicine? Presented by the University of California - Berkeley Museum of Paleontology, this online exhibit explores basic aspects of the earth’s largest group of plants: the Anthophyta (otherwise known as the flowering plants). The exhibit is divided into three sections including Fossil Record, Systematics, and...

Created by botanist Dr. Gerald D. Carr of the University of Hawaii, this website is filled with great annotated photos of vascular plants. The site is organized into sections for the non-flowering and flowering plant families. The plant families are organized according to several systems including traditional presentation, Arthur Cronquist’s classification scheme (1981), and the phylogenetic...