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Welcome
to the Pineywoods Plants Digital
Gallery! (Version 12.08)
The
"Pineywoods" represent the forested eastern edge
of Texas
along with the the
ecologically-similar forests of adjacent northwestern and central
Louisiana.
Markedly different from most of Texas, tall stands of pines and
broad-leaved deciduous trees cover much of the gently
rolling landscape. There
is a rich variety of natural habitats: dry sandy upland pine-oak
communities, remnants of once-extensive longleaf pine woodlands,
pine-deciduous mixed forests, vast "bottomland hardwood" forests on the
floodplains of the region's numerous rivers, baldcypress swamps, and
much more. The climate is warm and humid; some areas experience as much
as 50" (1270 mm) of rainfall a year. Timber, poultry, and ranching are
some important local industries and much of the Pineywoods remains
relatively free from urbanization. Public lands such as Kisatchie
National Forest (Louisiana),
the
National
Forests & Grasslands of Texas, and
the Big
Thicket National Preserve
enable one to easily explore
the rich and varied flora which includes more than 2100 species. In
this gallery you will find pictures of native and naturalized vascular
plants from this fascinating, and to many, little known, part of North
America.
The gallery, a
product of ten years of
photographic field excursions, currently contains 6,374 photographs
representing 1,167 native and naturalized vascular plant species, more
than half
of the local vascular plant flora along with images of 42 local
bryophyte taxa. Nearly all species that a causal
observer is likely to encounter during a typical walk in the woods are
represented along with most habitat-type indicator species.
For
ferns, lycophytes, gymnosperms, and monocots, nomenclature and family circumscriptions follow Volume I of the
Illustrated Flora of East Texas (Diggs et al. 2006) which mostly corresponds to the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG) system
(APG 1998, 2003, 2009)--
the main exception being that the
Agavaceae and related families are not combined into an
expanded Asparagaceae as in
APG. For eudicotyledons, species nomenclature follows the Flora of North
America (FNA 1993+) series where possible and USDA
PLANTS Database for groups
not yet published in FNA. Eudicot family circumscriptions follow APG. Bryophyte
nomenclature follows the Bryoflora
of North
America website. Diggs
et al. (1999) and Correl
and Johnston (1979) were among the many additional sources
consulted for taxonomy
and species identification.
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Currently one
may browse by botanical family names
within each of the major groups of plants. Click the
"Browse the Gallery"
link.
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In the future,
we hope to enable browsing by
easily-recognized characters such as flower color as well as by habitat
type. The gallery will continue to connect students, laymen, and
professionals with the plants that are the foundation of both the
ecosystems and economy of east
Texas.
- This website works best with Mozilla Firefox. Some
features may not be available with MS IExplorer. Google Chrome and Chromium web
browser also seem to
work well but haven't been tested as much as Firefox.
What's New
- 31 August 2012: Version 12.08. Tenth
Aniversary Edition! I'ts hard to believe
that
Pineywoods Plants is 10 years old. With this update we corrected
several errors and added and culled images for a net gain of 1336. The
gallery now stands
at 6,374 images representing 1,167 vascular plant species and 42
bryophyte taxa native or naturalized to the Texas Pineywoods.
- 13 October 2010, Version 10.10. The collection
now
largely follows the APG system for circumscription of the
families. 43 new images were added including several new species.
- 08 June 2010: Version 10.06 is
here! The galleries have
been redesigned and we added 974 new images and culled 275. There
are
now 5,036 pictures.
- 14 May
2008: A new web showing local forest
ecosystem types of the Pineywoods was added. See the links above.
- 01 April 2008:
Version 8.04 is here! More than 1
year of "shooting" has allowed us to add and cull for a net gain of 807
images and a total of 4,337. The excellent thesis work of Melia Huston
has enabled the addition of 208 images of mosses, liverworts and
hornworts. We changed the gallery name to reflect the inclusion of
these non-vascular plants!
- 07 December
2006. We both added and culled images
resulting in a net gain of 423 photographs. Spelling and taxonomic
errors were corrected. The polyphyletic Liliaceae were split into
several smaller families; as a result of this and other changes,
nomenclature for ferns, gymnosperms, and monocots now follows the
newly-published Volume I of the
Illustrated
Flora of East Texas (Diggs
et al. 2006). Two small galleries of plants from the Texas
coast
and the
Trans-Pecos region
of west Texas were launched.
- 25 April 2006.
The gallery now includes 3107 images
representing nearly half of the native and naturalized species of the
pineywoods. Most images (large) are now at least 1188x1584 pixel
resolution.
- 30 April 2004.
We added new photos and removed
low-quality ones. There are now more than 2,500 images. One can now
browse large or small images.
- July 13 2003.
We now have nearly 2,000 photos!
- January 15
2002. The Pineywoods Vascular Plant
gallery was launched! Currently we have about 900 images and will be
adding more soon.
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