Contribute Occurrence Records
Do you have plant locality records that could fill in the gaps in our knowledge of where Illinois' plants grow?
One type of information that we are particularly keen on compiling is occurrence records of Illinois Plants. The two key pieces of information that each occurrence record must include is 1) an accurate identification of the plant and 2) a record of where it was collected.
These records must be verified in some way. Ideally the record could be represented by an herbarium specimen or detailed photograph. Photographs may or may not have a physical specimen associated with them. They could also be records from a professional botanical survey that lacks vouchers, but were conducted by experts who are unlikely to misidentify plants. This could include sources such as plant lists for small parks or nature preserves, records from herbaria, forestry surveys or inventories, or botanical notes from expert botanists.
We are currently only able to accept large files with > 500 plant records because of the manner in which data quality proofing is implemented on this website. We are most interested in very high quality records with vouchered specimens, but we want to include as comprehensive as possible a list of geographic information for plant localities -- with the goal of avoiding erroneous records when possible. We will not display detailed geographic information about sensitive plant species, such as threatened or endangered plants.
If you have records that you think would be appropriate to display on the site, please contact us. We will send you a template that details how to format plant occurrence records and what type of information is needed (essentially Latin species names, lat/long, and any meta-information about the records).