Websites for Ecol 414/514
Here is a list of webpages useful in plant identification. I recommend that you copy and paste this page into a blank Word document. Then the web links will come alive, and you can just click on them to jump to the site. (Or at least it worked with me, with Microsoft Word and Internet Explorer).
To get the PLANT FAMILY, try:
Arizonensis is a terrific site, with photos galore. I’ve picked out the excellent page on SW plants, giving the characteristics of common families, a mess of photos, and links to the family’s Wikipedia page
The University of Cincinnati’s Clermont College has a page listing plant families, and the cool thing is that it speaks when you click on the family name. So now you can at least sound like a botanist….
Some sites allow you to PICK AND CHOOSE PLANT CHARACTERISTICS, and the site tries to ID the plant.
The best of the bunch is SEINET, the Southwest Environmental Information Network. The site has fabulous keys that allow you to get a very good idea who you’re dealing with. From the list under “Arizona Flora”, pick, say, Tucson Mountains, and see what you get. You can also try Saguaro National Park. Finally, for the shortest and simplest list, scroll down to the ‘Teaching Checklist,’ and choose Sonoran Desert Field Botany 2010.
If you’d like to skip the
Checklists&taxon=All+Species
A University of Texas, El Paso database of Chihuahuan desert plant names and photos:
The Firefly Forest website is especially for Tucson flowers, and is excellent. You pick the flower color, and go through the photos till you match it up. However, there are a lot of photos; pick yellow flowers, for instance, and there are 18 pages of photos, alphabetically arranged, each page with 6 species. So it’s good to have a notion, however faint, of the scientific name. You can also try using the list of common names.
The JepsonManual is for California, but is the best to use if you feel you know the plant family. Once you take a guess at the family – say, Fabaceae, the legumes – you can bring up keys that will take you to the genus and species. You’ll also get range maps, and if it’s in SE California, it’s likely in SW Arizona, too.
Some photographers list their flower photos by species. For example, Erik Enderson has a web site with beautiful images of Arizona and Sonoran plants.
Reny Parker also has photos of plants from SE California, and many are the same species you’ll find in Arizona.
For cactus, it’s hard to beat CactusGuide.com, at
And, finally, the Cabeza Prieta Natural History Association has an excellent web site for plants of SW Arizona – the real drylands of Arizona. Anything you find above 4000 feet around Tucson probably won’t be in this list, but for everything else, it’s good. It even includes a ‘Plant Identification Form’ that allows you to fill in characteristics like leaf shape and arrangement – and it even works!