I'm old: I can't live with 20 year ago tools used in biology and botany.
When I was young they teach me ho to identify an unknown plant: open a guide a follow a dichotomous key.
Now I can do the same in a lot of different ways:
- Post on a Facebook group as https://www.facebook.com/groups/1514048998813013/ and you will fined the name in 5 minutes;
- Search on Wikipedia or Encyclopedia of life http://eol.org/;
- Send a Whatsapp message to your smarter friend.
But sometimes I have some old time questions:
- What is the key difference between this two plants ?
- This plant is more similar to Rosacese or Saxifragaceae ?
Botanic guides are fat books: Flora d'Italia is composed by three volumes. A lot of pound to take with you for a trip in the nature.
So I produced a project FiorieChiavi (FlowersAndKeys) github https://github.com/caiofior/fioriechiavi.it to present my favorite dichotomous key on:
- Web, http://www.florae.it/;
- Smartphone or tablet, https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.caiofior.florafull;
- Epub, https://www.amazon.it/dp/B0725NMXCQ.
The project uses php, mysql, cordova and pandoc; the hardest part is the data entry. Now it is completed at 80%: it will take another year to collect all the data.
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