Our 2020 Achievements
February 9th, 2021 by Alex Zorach
Like for much of the world, 2020 was a rough year for us, with me falling sick with COVID and becoming a "long-hauler", but in spite of the setbacks and lost work associated with this illness, we still achieved a remarkable amount on bplant.org over the past year.New Plant & Ecoregion Articles
We now have 59 published plant articles, and 25,142 stub articles. These stubs represent imported data on even more of North America's plants, now covering most native and introduced species as well as many naturally-occurring hybrids. Many these unpublished articles, which are viewable through the site's search function, have substantial amounts of material on them already: 5612 have range maps, 208 have images, and 352 have some text but are not yet complete.We also made great progress on ecoregions. Moving west and south from the northeast, we have completed all articles on Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and South Carolina.
Here is an interactive map of Michigan as a sample:
We also completed much of Illinois, Alabama, and Georgia, and began work on Wisconsin and Mississippi.
Many of these articles, however, still lack photographs. Our blog post about helping us find ecoregion photos explains what we are looking for. If you have or can take or locate any photos that we could use for regions presently lacking photos, please get in touch!
Many More Plant Photos
We added 418 plant photos. Here is a brief gallery highlighting a few of them. Can you identify any of these plants before clicking on the images?Many of these images were added specifically for use in our plant ID / compraison guides, which leads into our next accomplishment.
More ID / Comparison Guides
We completed and published 23 new plant ID / comparison guides, and began 19 more in-progress. Here are the ones we completed in 2020, as well as 3 more that we began in 2020 and have since completed:- Sweetbay Magnolia vs Southern Magnolia
- Paper Birch vs Mountain Paper Birch
- Gray Birch vs European White Birch
- Paper Birch vs European White Birch
- American Bittersweet vs Oriental Bittersweet
- Northern Red Oak vs Jack Oak
- Smooth Sumac vs Staghorn Sumac
- American Sycamore vs London Planetree
- White Oak vs Swamp White Oak
- Eastern Redcedar vs Northern White-Cedar
- Atlantic White Cedar vs Eastern Redcedar
- Atlantic White Cedar vs Northern White-Cedar
- Common Hop vs Japanese Hop
- Coastal Plain Joe Pye Weed vs Spotted Joe Pye Weed
- Trumpetweed vs Spotted Joe Pye Weed
- Coastal Plain Joe Pye Weed vs Trumpetweed
- Blackjack Oak vs Water Oak
- Bear Oak vs Black Oak
- Redstar vs Scarlet Creeper
- Bear Oak vs Blackjack Oak
- Lemon Balm vs Catnip
- Chestnut Oak vs Chinquapin Oak
- Swamp Chestnut Oak vs Chestnut Oak
- Swamp Chestnut Oak vs Chinquapin Oak
- Water Oak vs Willow Oak
- American Holly vs European Holly
Interlinking with Databases
One of the most exciting achievements of 2020 was our interlinking of our plant pages with their entries in other plant databases, which you can read about in our previous blog post if you missed it. Since publishing that post, we have added 5 more databases, bringing us to a total of 10, and we have more underway.You can find our list of such interlinked databases on our websites page, which is updated as we add new ones.
New Homepage
We redesigned our homepage in order to better highlight newly-published and recently-updated plant pages, ecoregion articles, and ID/Comparison guides, as explained in this blog post.Numerous Small Tweaks
We also made a whole series of small tweaks, some visible and some behind-the-scenes. These improvements include bug fixes, optimizations to make our pages quick to load even when being viewed by many people at once, as well as navigational and user-interface tweaks, and improvements in the pulling of images and descriptions when sharing our pages on social media.More Donors & Financial Support
We are also pleased that, in spite of dedicating very little energy to fundraising, we received over four times the amount of donations in 2020 as in 2019. You can find updated information on our Finances page, which is linked to in the footer of our site. Thank you so much to all our early donors!If you are not already supporting us, please consider donating! You can also find the link in the footer of our site, along with a FAQ that we hope will address any concerns you might have.
We are still a long way from paying a living wage to support my full-time work on this site, which leaves the site's future uncertain. Donating is the most effective way to ensure that bplant.org continues to be developed and maintained, and remains ad-free and freely accessible to all.
What's In Store For The Future?
Besides continuing publishing plant and ecoregion articles, new ID/comparison guides, and interlinking with more databases, we also have some exciting new projects in the works. We are planning on eventually launching user accounts, which will allow users to save or bookmark plants, and also to request the prioritization of incomplete or missing articles. We also are planning the generation of plant lists for a particular ecoregion, which, combined with our ecoregion locator, will allow anyone to type in an address or location, and pin a point on a map, and then access a list of plants native to the region.There is a lot to look forward to!
Archive of All Blogs
The Effect of the 2024 US Election on Plant Biodiversity and bplant.org, October 30th, 2024
The Problems With Nursery-Bought Plants, And The Solutions, October 8th, 2024
More Databases Linked & Search Improvements for Scientific Names, July 9th, 2024
Choosing The Best Common Names For Plants: Challenges & Solutions, April 19th, 2024
Range Map & Taxonomic Update Progress, January 31st, 2024
Giving Thanks To Everyone We Rely On, November 22nd, 2023
Thinking More Deeply About Habitat, April 5th, 2023
2022 Year-End Summary: Successes & New Goals, February 15th, 2023
New Databases Linked: Flora of North America & NatureServe Explorer, November 11th, 2022
All Range Maps 2nd Generation, Taxonomic Updates, & Fundraising Goal Met!, September 29th, 2022
More Range Map Improvements, POWO Interlinking, And Notes Fields, June 7th, 2022
Ecoregion-Based Plant Lists and Search, March 30th, 2022
Progress Updates on Range Maps and More, February 10th, 2022
The Vision for bplant.org, December 9th, 2021
New Server: Software & Hardware, August 30th, 2021
More & Improved Plant Range Maps, July 19th, 2021
A Control Section for Invasive Plants, April 15th, 2021
Progress Bars & State Ecoregion Legends, March 11th, 2021
Our 2020 Achievements, February 9th, 2021
Interlinking Databases for Plant Research, November 11th, 2020
A New Homepage, Highlighting Our Articles, July 29th, 2020
A False Recovery, But North Carolina's Ecoregions are Complete!, June 9th, 2020
We're Back After COVID-19 Setbacks, April 3rd, 2020
Help Us Find Ecoregion Photos, February 27th, 2020
What We Achieved in 2019, December 30th, 2019
Plant Comparison and ID Guides, October 30th, 2019
We Are Now Accepting Donations, October 14th, 2019
US State Ecoregion Maps, New Footer, Ecoregion Article Progress, and References, September 19th, 2019
Tentative Range Maps of Native Plants, August 12th, 2019
Ecoregion Locator and Interactive Maps, July 10th, 2019
Using Ecoregions Over Political Boundaries, May 13th, 2019
How We Handle Wild vs Cultivated Plants, April 16th, 2019
A Blog To Keep People Updated On Our Progress, April 8th, 2019
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