Limitations of The Taxonomic Data Center

Limitations, misunderstandings, and disagreements will always exist in attempting to compile a digital account of all species for such a large and diverse geographic area. In reality, the exact size of the flora is unlikely ever to be known, although our knowledge of the plants of North America will continue to be refined through research using both traditional and modern methods, To understand the precise distribution of all species, know the nativity of each of them, and in some cases know with certainty their delimitation and systematic placement, will require research well into the future. In the meantime, we hope that our Floristic Synthesis website will be a modest, but useful attempt at summarizing the current state of our knowledge on the systematics, nomenclature and distribution of the North American flora.   1)   Disappointing to some will be our assessment of nativity, which applies geographically only to the level of state, province or equivalent. Those who understand the difficulty in determining nativity, even at the state level, will realize that finer determination is impractical and imprecise. To help determine nativity, we have consulted countless historical documents, often dating back to the 17th century.   2)  Although collecting activity has been uneven throughout North America, and the size of counties shows great variability, the number of specimens overall allows for interesting patterns to emerge. Still, additional collections from states such as Georgia, Mississippi and Iowa, are highly desirable. Early in the process of gathering county-level data, we expected additional county-level records for these states to be found in some of our larger herbaria, but after extensive surveys at the University of North Carolina, the Smithsonian Institution, the Harvard University Herbaria, and others, few additional collections for these states were found. Perhaps local and more regional searches of herbaria could prove to be more rewarding.   3)   After much deliberation, it was decided to produce county-level maps for every recognized infraspecific taxon. Although these efforts must be considered tentative, for many of these taxa, the maps do provide relatively complete and accurate county-level distribution and range limits. Admittedly, many additional decades will be necessary to establish more precision at this taxonomic level. Not to present these maps now, however, would deny or delay the botanical community from making necessary corrections.     4)   The random-access keys are still in draft form. The plan is to expand the keys to include ferns, lycophytes and grass-like plants in 2013-2014. We welcome corrections, modifications and suggestions to improve the current keys.    5)   Recognizing fully the importance of high-quality photography for plant identification, for nearly two decades BONAP has aggressively gathered nearly 300,000 photographic slides and digital photographs, to produce one of the largest plant photograph galleries in North America. The Image Gallery could not have been developed without the generous contributions from hundreds of excellent photographers from across the globe. We take great pride in honoring these extremely talented individuals, who graciously granted permission to use their photographs on the BONAP website. With so many photographs, however, there are certain to be misidentifications or linking problems associated with the originals. Although we have corrected many of them, other problems are certain to remain.  Your assistance in notifying us of such problems will be greatly appreciated.   BONAP’s goal is to expand the Image Gallery to include multiple photographs of all North American plants. Indeed, top-quality photographs can effectively serve as surrogate vouchers for documenting county-level occurrences. We welcome individual participation through submission of slides or digital images. Photographers will be credited fully for their contribution (see website for statement of credit and copyright). Please recognize that all photographs used on our website are copyrighted, and require written permission from the original photographer to be used. The entire list of photographic contributors can be seen here.    6)  Like other aspects of this website, certain limitations exist regarding the characters and characteristics used for both the biological attributes and family keys. In many cases, a single character, such as flower color, flowering season, nativity, etc., required months or years to apply uniformly to every taxon. Too, some characters are extremely variable in their expression. To aid in identification, we have tried to include as many exceptions as necessary, while being careful not to add unnecessarily or arbitrarily to weaken the identification process.   7)   The current TDC accounts for all vascular plant taxa known and reported to occur within North America north of Mexico (see precise geographic area in the Help file). Our current release of the North American flora began with the earliest voucher specimens deemed to be geographically reliable, and terminated with vouchered specimens or reliable reports through 2012, with selected occurrences through 2013. The website, and accompanying Floristic Synthesis on CD-ROM, to appear later in 2013, will represent the first comprehensive update of BONAP’s taxonomy, nomenclature, and phytogeography since the 1999 release of the Floristic Synthesis of North America. It also presents the first comprehensive revision of the BONAP's data that were provided to the USDA PLANTS and ITIS Databases. Although the plan is to keep the website and accompanying CD-ROM current with annual updates, the user community must recognize that thousands of taxonomic and floristic changes will likely be required in future updates as our knowledge expands.   8)   Tens of thousands of unreported county-level, state-level and/or national-level records are documented here for the first time. Over the past half-century, nearly 2 million specimens were critically reviewed by BONAP. Rather than prepare specific publications for all first-time reports of taxa thought to be new to individual counties, states or indeed new to the United States or Canada, we have decided to include them all within the TDC.   9)   Although the website currently reports approximately 5,000,000 county-level records and 500,000 state-level records, many additional records will doubtlessly be reported in future editions. We estimate that between 100,000-300,000 accurately identified, but unreported, county-level plant vouchers exist currently within our herbaria, museums, and other repositories across North America. Within each of our larger regional repositories, these records might approach 10,000-20,000 county-level records, and within a state’s repositories, an additional 2,000-5,000 county-level records might exist. More numerous are the potentially unreported county-level occurrences that exist across the landscape. We estimate these to be 1,000,000-2,000,000—the majority of which will perhaps never be reported. Encouraging however, is that BONAP has added far fewer new periphery county records to native ranges for this release than from prior ones, suggesting that the basic ranges for at least native species are well-known. However, the distributions of exotic species are far less known and unpredictable since many occur randomly across the landscapes in haphazard and checkerboard patterns.      As with every aspect of the database, we sincerely welcome comments and suggestions from all.   -JTK