Mission Grant Awarded to the Native Plant Master Program

At their meeting on February 4, 2017, the CoNPS Board of Directors awarded a $200 grant to the Native Plant Master Program in Jefferson County to update their Colorado Plant Database.

The Colorado Plant Database contains detailed information on the identity, ecology, and human connections for Colorado plants including research-based weed management recommendations for noxious alien invasives. There were 101,122 page views of the plant database by 17,987 users in 2016, demonstrating that it is a popular resource potentially serving professionals, Society members, volunteers and the general public.

Even so, the database is no longer consistent with the most recent taxonomic publication, Flora of Colorado, written by Jennifer Ackerfield, curator of the CSU Herbarium, one of the oldest and largest herbaria in the West. Currently, the Colorado Plant Database uses nomenclature from Weber and Wittmann’s Colorado Flora. William Weber is professor emeritus at the University of Colorado.

The grant will support adding the nomenclature from Ackerfield’s Flora of Colorado to the Colorado Plant Database so that the database will reflect current taxonomic knowledge about the plants of Colorado. Ackerfield nomenclature will be listed as the primary name for each species. All current synonymy in the database will be retained including Weber and Wittmann names which will become synonyms.