Palmweb continues to grow

(PhysOrg.com) -- Palmweb is a growing online encyclopaedia on palms which now contains descriptions of all genera and about half of all palm species.

The palm biodiversity web portal Palmweb was launched by Kew’s palm team at the World Palm Symposium in Montpellier and Flora Malesiana Symposium in Singapore during 2010.

Built upon the innovative EDIT Platform for Cybertaxonomy, Palmweb is an online resource for authoritative and up-to-date palm taxonomy that brings together information from often scattered sources for all 2,400 species of palms. Structured around the World Checklist of Palms, Palmweb provides taxon pages for all genera and species of palms, which include maps, images, nomenclature, taxonomic descriptions, protologues, specimen citations and links to numerous external web resources. In addition, an online glossary to palm terminology has been created, as well as fully illustrated interactive keys to palm genera and informative introductory pages.

Palmweb already contains over 3,000 images and full descriptive content for all genera and half of all palm species, the remainder being covered by outline species pages. Next steps will involve the completion of full taxon pages for all species and the incorporation of economic data on palms through the EU FP7-Palms project. Developments in Palmweb are closely linked to the eMonocot project which aims to develop an internet resource for monocots and create web tools to facilitate the taxonomic process.

Item from Dr Bill Baker (Head of Palm Research, RBG Kew)

More information:
www.palmweb.org/

Provided by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew