Michigan Flora Website
The LSA Herbarium curates and maintains a comprehensive database collection of known vascular plant species growing wild in Michigan, based on the Field Manual of Michigan Flora. The original Michigan Flora website was developed decades ago to serve as an “evolving illustrated companion to the Field Manual, presenting photographs of the species and their diagnostic features, and build on the foundation of the Field Manual by incorporating updates and new discoveries.” The original website had become quite dated, however, and increasingly difficult to use, update, maintain, and secure. The Research Software Engineering team worked closely with Michigan Flora curators to design and develop an all new Michigan Flora website from the ground up.
As a companion to the website, the RSE team has developed the Michigan Flora App, which makes many of the website's key features available without an internet connection.
Key Benefits to the Lab
- Flora site administrators worked closely with us to design and develop their new website.
- Elegant, performant, responsive, and secure.
- Easy to use, update, and maintain.
- Interactive species maps created with Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
Details
The Michigan Flora website serves as a rich and authoritative resource on vascular plants, one of the largest and most comprehensive of its kind. It is widely used by ecologists, botanists, land managers, and others across the United States.
The website’s primary search queries and displays information about the entire Michigan Flora, including hundreds of plant families, genera, and nearly 3000 plant species records – each of which contain a gallery of images, as well as an interactive ArcGIS map displaying geospatial and other information about individual specimens. In addition, there are over 200,000 individual specimen records queryable via a specimen search.
