Tuesday 22 October 2013

News October 2013

The last 18 months:  Work has been handicapped by the lack of financial support.   The  Ecoflora has been updated and maintained with no funding.  However in spite of this,  considerable activity has been undertaken.  40 alien plants have had their ecological characteristics added to the database, and work continues with the addition of 7 characteristics to every plant. We are half way through this at the moment and  it should be completed by the end of the year.  Conference attendance in Europe has highlighted the lack of funding for infrastructure projects - several grant awarding bodies specifically excluding database construction from their remit.  This handicaps the resuscitation of  otherwise dead data, but work continues .

The next 12 months should see the continuation of updates, the addition of photographs, the addition of new ecologcal characteristic data to for some of the additional alien species and the updating of the taxonomic database to reflect the latest taxonomic revisions. Errors have been noted in the typography of the authorities, and we are correcting these as we come across them.

Missing Data : We now have a missing data facility, so everyone can now look and see what measurements we need to complete the database, so for those of us still working on plants, please check the missing data facility for the plants you are working on and take a few extra measurements for the database.

Usage: During the 9 months to Oct  2013 we have had just under 13,000 separate users of the website. So thanks to our hosts 34sp.com for providing such a seamless service. And on January 1 we had 34 separate users, 6 more than last year.  Again, none of them were me.

Associated Fungi, and Phytophagous Insects: Authorities have been added, together with synonymy and name status, from data generously supplied by the Natural History Museum. Errors remain ours however and some typographic errors remain and it is hoped that these will be cleared up in the coming months.

Updates of Ecological characteristics : 2 plants have had their ecological characteristics updated. We continue to add  new data to the alien species.

Photographs: Through links with the Bristol Environmental Records Centre, we hope to have a number of  photographs added to the  web site by the end of the year.


Links: Several new links have been added to our list or sites relevant to the UK flora.

Funding : No funding has been awarded for the last 18 months. We continue to search for further funding to keep the site active. Further funding always needs to be sourced. Contact Prof Alastair Fitter, or Henry Ford from the contacts page.

Requests : We are always looking for more data. If you have any, we would be very grateful if you could contribute. Useful photographs and drawings 
will be much appreciated.

Henry Ford, Jan 2012.