With respect to using relational databases for plant identification:
I am not aware of anyone using relational databases in this regard, but Mike
Dallwitz in Australia has developed a very powerful program that, among
other things, allows for online plant identification. The program is DELTA
and for information about it, consult
http://muse.bio.cornell.edu/
One has to go a few subdirectories down, but that will get you started and I
do not have the rest of the address. The primary problem that I see iwth
using DELTA to teach plant identification is that one wants a information
tailored to one's own locality (state or region). The chances are that it
is not yet available. There are DELTA databases for identifying grasses of
thw orld or plant families of the world, but because they have to use
exactly the same descriptive language for plants from throughout the world,
the language and terminology used is more than my students would be able to
use. {To be honest, some of it would require me to go back to a botanical
dictionary if I were seriously interested in using these programs for plant
identification; I tend to use almost any other resource first).
On the other hand, there is a way in which I plan to use DELTA in my class
this spring: I shall ask students to use it to develop a key and
descriptions to a small group of plants, possibly 10 taxa. I think that it
will make the students more appreciative of the work involved in developing
a key that encompasses the variability, the amount of work that needs to go
one before one starts writing a key (e.g., one has to know what one has),
and the difficulty in defining characters and character states in a way that
can be used across even a moderately diverse group of organisms.
Last year Harvey Ballard (a grad student at U. Wisc.) and I developed a
quick and dirty key to the violets of Utah - which Harvey convinced me have
been messed up by too much lumping. My students thought it was the the
cat's whiskers - and asked when the rest of the Utah Flora would be
available in the same manner. I laughed. Harvey has studied violets for
years, even before starting graduate school. I had some familiarity with
DELTA, although not the Windows version which allows one to incorporate
pictures (which were a definite plus so far as my students were concerned).
Mike Dallwitz is fantastic about responding to questions. Even so, it
probably took about 3 days to develop the key. It needs some correction now
and Harvey is busy doing the molecular thing, writing his dissertation,
etc., so I am not sure when our effort will be "publishable" (i.e., made
available through the MUSE site). I do use it as a demo here on occasion.
You would need DELTA to use it, so check out the MUSE site to find out more
about DELTA.
As an aside, I am - in my spare time - pursuing a slightly different aspect
of plant id, providing everyone with a means of checking an identification.
Being a grass person, I have started with grasses. One day (in the not too
distant future), I want to incorporate a self-instructiona unit (that could
also be incoroporated into a formal class) on grass identification. For
now, all I have is a few sample files on the WWW - and in a very low tech
format.
Check http://www.biology.usu.edu/herbarium/vgh/grasses/stip/stipeae.html
Then feel free to look at some of the files in //..../herbarium/ which may
give you a some idea of what I have in mind. I suspect that by the time I
can make this an official project, there will be far better ways of
accomplishing my goals. Indeed, about a week ago someone made a WWW
compatible interface for DELTA. Life races on.
Also, the Flora North America folks have come out with a CD ROM version of
the second volume of that flora, i.e., the one treating ferns and
gymnopserms. I have not seen it advertised yet, so it may still be only in
a test phase - and I have a feeling it will not be cheap.
Another effort along these lines, one I was really impressed by, is being
developed at MacDonald College in Quebec, Canada. This is an English
language institution in a French language province. What the folks there
are producing is what I really want to see: a CD that students can use to
help them learn. The feature that particularly impressed me was the review
mode. A picture of a flower or plant would be shown on the screen and the
user was asked to state what family it was in. If the wrong answer is
entered, the program not only says wrong (without ringing loud bells) but
says what features IN THAT PICTURE would let you know that it would not be
the family entered. According to Marsha Waterway, writing these responses
is the most demanding aspect of the program because one has to think of all
the different reasons users would select a given answer. The aspect I like
about the program is that it concentrates on helping students learn rather
than being something one uses, does, and puts away. It was stimulated by
the need to provide French speaking students with an opportunity to spend
longer with the information being presented in lecture and to do so in an
active manner, not just watching a video of the lecture again but it really
does provide what we would like all students to have available. I have no
idea of the status of the program. Discussions about copyright,
publication, etc. were in progress this summer (Marsha had a demo version at
the Plant Systematics meetings this summer).
Sorry about the length of this answer. Hope some of it is of interest.