Plantarium

Plants and lichens of Russia and neighboring countries: open online galleries and plant identification guide

About the project

"Plantarium" is an atlas of plant and lichen species and an illustrated guide to plant identification intended for a wide range of users — both for amateurs and professionals — botanists, geobotanists and ecologists.

The main purpose of the website is helping to identify wild plants and lichens from the territory of the former USSR. The aim of the project is to collect photographs and to include in the key as many species as possible not only from all regions of Russia, but also from neighboring countries.

The guide to plant identification is designed for users with different levels of botanical knowledge. In contrast to "paper" manuals and their digital clones, the plant identification system of "Plantarium" does not use a dichotomous key. Instead, you can specify any number of key characteristics and the result will be a range of taxa that meet the query conditions.

With the ability to find a species by name, "Plantarium" is a practical illustrated atlas of plants and lichens. The search for information can be carried out by both the Latin (scientific), and by the Russian names.

"Plantarium" provides project participants with the ability to create arbitrary collections of images, which can include any photos of plants and lichens published on the website. These collections can be used for educational and other non-commercial purposes in the form of presentations or slideshows.

The project website is supported by the TetraSoft company.

Data

Plantarium is a non-commercial project open to free additions and corrections. The project participants gradually process information about the taxa, replenishing the lists of Russian names and sets of key traits for plant identification guide, as well as collections of photographs that allow visually checking the identification of plants. We welcome any help from botanists and photographers, professionals and amateurs.

Information on taxa

The core of the project is a database of taxa Latin names and synonyms. Lists of taxa are based on

• checklist by S.K. Czerepanov "Vascular plants of Russia and adjacent states (the former USSR)" (1995);
• data of the project "Moss flora of Russia", coordinated by M.S. Ignatov;
• book by A.D. Potemkin and E.V. Sofronova "Liverworts and hornworts of Russia (vol. 1, 2009);
• book by G.P. Urbanavichus "A checklist of the lichen flora of Russia" (2010)

and other sources. You familiarize yourself with the database by browsing the illustrated gallery or the hierarchical directory of plant and lichen taxa of Russia and neighboring countries.

The project does not set itself the task of giving full botanical descriptions of all species, because many of them can be found on the Internet. We find and publish botanical descriptions of taxa only when they are not available on other Russian-language web resources; otherwise we provide links to such pages. Additionally we collect links to sources on the Internet that contain significant and useful information about the species such as data on medical, gastronomic, technical and other properties of plants.

In addition to photographs, we try to indicate the characteristic features of plants and lichens that are suitable for identification in the field. If you are good with plants or lichens, you can help the project create such descriptions.

Plants and lichens

Information about plants and lichens is presented in the following sections of the site:

Environment

"Plantarium" also contains images of landscapes and habitats from the locations where photos of plants and lichens were taken. All landscape photos refer to geographic points added by project participants.

Thanks to the system of description of regional location, geographic points are automatically aggregated by administrative and physiographic regions. Automatic grouping capabilities are extended with geographic sets, which are arbitrary groups of geographic points and regions created by users. For any geographic point, region, or set, you can view the gallery of landscapes and habitatis, photos of plants and lichens, and lists of photographed taxa.

You can start browsing from these pages:

The map below shows only a hundred newly created geographic points; in fact, there are many more.

Participation

We can help each other. Each photo you publish is a contribution to the general treasury of knowledge that will allow someone to identify the plant or lichen that has been found. Likewise, if you come across an unknown species, lovers of plants and mushrooms from other regions of Russia and neighboring countries will help you with their photos and descriptions.

If you

• would like to take part in the creation of a online plant identification guide;
• want to usefully publish photos of plants and lichens growing in your area or encountered on trips and expeditions;
• can recognize plant and lichen species in the field and can teach it to others;
• love photographing plants and lichens

join to the "Plantarium"!

Rights

All rights to the images published on the site belong to their authors. Using of photographs and their fragments (except viewing) without the permission of the authors is prohibited. If you need such permission and/or originals of photos then contact their authors by e-mail, indicating links to pages with images you are interested in.

Text materials published on the site can be freely copied and distributed. When copied texts are used, a link to the site www.plantarium.ru is required.

The "Plantarium" green leaf icon is licensed under the GNU GPL version 2 or later. The original icon image is available in vector form. The author of the changes made to the original image is Ivan Fomichev.

Responsibility

All information published on the site is provided "as is". Participants of the "Plantarium" project, as well as administrators, moderators and the owner of the site are not responsible for its reliability and accuracy.

How to cite

To refer to "Plantarium" in print publications, you can use the following wording: