Other IDTools

Live Plant Photos

We know few other curated collections of tropical plant images. We provide this resource as a way to review many images of different families and genera.  In this way one gradually learns distinctive groups, especially if combined with other information obtained from books, herbarium work, or field observations. This resource is linked to our herbarium specimen page. 

Neotropical Herbarium Specimens

Identifying specimens can be a time-consuming process, especially  you have many general collections and/or sterile specimens from ecological plots. Before beginning the arduous search for identifications in an herbarium, it can be helpful to eliminate some possibilities by reviewing scanned specimens online.  Our scanned specimens from the Neotropics, while not complete, allow one to quickly compare many of the common species, and get ideas for species identification. Our ultimate goal is to provide an index of the entire Neotropical flora, with representative specimens for each species.

Keys to Nature

The Keys to Nature Project provides a forum and toolset for scientists, partners, and volunteers to develop and share on-line, photo-based keys to any group of plants, animals, or fungi in the Chicago Region. Fourteen keys are now available, for regional milkweeds, shrubs, mussels, salamanders and newts, turtles, frogs and toads, and more. New keys—to regional orchids, goldenrods and damselflies—are in development.

vPlants

vPlants is a virtual herbarium for the Chicago Region. This resource contains data for 80,000 plant and fungi specimens from three institutions with rich Chicago Region collections: The Field Museum, The Morton Arboretum, and the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Micro Herbaria

Micro Herbaria are e-books containing a compilation of selected scanned herbarium specimens. They are most useful to botanists and herbarium professionals who are accustomed to comparing pressed and dried specimens. Each e-book is a compilation of photocopied or scanned herbarium specimens of plants for a specific area.

Country Abbreviated Title Authors Pages
BOLIVIA Arboles y Arbustos de CHUQUISACA Serrano 300
BRAZIL A familia MYRTACEAE no Sudeste Mata Atlântica (color) Kawasaki 150
BRAZIL Guía ETNOBOTANICA Benjamin Constant, Pará (color) Rios 150
COLOMBIA Plantas leñosas, CASANARE, Orinoquia Alvira, Viña 400
COSTA RICA
Plantas leñosas, LA SUERTE Biological Station, Limón
Foster, et al 150
GUATEMALA Arboles más comunes, TIKAL, Petén Aguilar 100
MEXICO Arboles y Arbustos, Región TIERRA CALIENTE, Michoacán Aguirre 45
MEXICO Flora del RIO CHIQUITO, Morelia, Michoacán Medina 1100
MEXICO HELECHOS de la Peninsula de YUCATAN Palacios-Rios 100
MEXICO Plantas del CERRO PATAMBAN, Michoacán Torres 400
MEXICO Plantas TREPADORAS, Bahia de CHAMELA, Jalisco Burnham, Lott 300
NICARAGUA Common TREES, ATLANTIC COAST Garth 100
PANAMA Plantas de ALTOS de CAMPANA Correa 1200
PERU MORACEAE del Perú G. Nuñez & R. Foster 400
PERU Plantas de la cuenca del RIO CAÑETE, Lima Beltran 400
PERU Plantas de MOQUEGUA Arakaki 450
PERU TREPADORAS de ALLPAHUAYO/MISHANA, Loreto Vásquez, Rojas 400
 
For more information about Micro Herbaria, or to order one of the above titles, please contact us at rrc@fieldmuseum.org
 
To see the scanned images in these books online, visit our Neotropical Herbarium Specimens site (http://fm1.fieldmuseum.org/vrrc/).