North Carolina Botanical GardenGarden Awarded Funding for National Plant Checklist
The UNC Herbarium, part of the Garden, was recently awarded a portion of a 3-year National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services for a Consensus Plant Checklist of the United States.
Herbaria, botanical gardens, seed banks, and other plant collections are important resources for learning about plants, how ecosystems are changing, and which plants need protection. These collections help scientists and land managers with research, species recovery, land management, environmental reviews, land-use planning, and public policy.
However, there is a major problem: the United States does not have one clear and trusted list of accepted plant names. Scientists and plant experts at different organizations may use different names or taxonomy for the same plant. This makes it hard to know which names to use and to connect information from different collections. These differences can make conservation work more difficult and can lead to mistakes when making decisions across large areas.
We will develop and test a clear, repeatable process for creating and updating a Consensus Plant Checklist of the United States. The checklist will provide a shared set of plant names and classifications that can be used by herbaria, botanical gardens, conservation groups, and government agencies.
The project will bring together information from scientific studies and major plant databases. Major collaborators include the Center for Plant Conservation, Flora of the Southeastern US (NCBG), Flora of North America, NatureServe, and Jepson Herbarium (Berkeley, CA). We will create a draft checklist that can be updated over time, build tools that show where experts disagree about plant names, and create a public process for experts to review the information and agree on the best choices.
The result will be a useful national plant checklist and a clear process for keeping it up to date. This approach could also be used in other parts of the world and for other groups of living things.
