Improvements Made to PLANTS Database

by Larry R. Sabata, Soil Scientist
Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS)
Topeka, Kansas

The NRCS PLANTS Database contains a wealth of plant resource information for planners, teachers, students, wetland specialists and to anyone who has an interest in the environment. The database continues to grow and become increasingly more user friendly.

Over the last several months, improvements have been made to the program’s plant distribution maps. Also, when searching for botanical information, clickable links are now available that help the user move more easily between profiles of closely related plants. This helps in narrowing the geographical possibilities for the plants being searched.

Right clicking on a “thumbnail” can now save the image to a user’s computer to place it in a working document. Additional available features include optional reports that can be tailored to evaluate special areas of interest, such as wetland indicator status, invasive plants, or threatened and endangered plant species.

Another feature is the addition of a ‘printer friendly’ version of the plant profile. This allows for a condensed version of the plant description to be available for printing. It has reduced white space and has links and other irrelevant information removed.

I encourage anyone who has yet to web search into the NRCS PLANTS Database to do so. The NRCS PLANTS Database can be reached at http://plants.usda.gov/.

For more information about NRCS programs, visit the Kansas NRCS web site at www.ks.nrcs.usda.gov.

This article is also available in Microsoft Word format.

Improvements Made to PLANTS Database (DOC; 28 KB)

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Last Modified: 09/08/2008