ESR Seed Stories: Get started
Research for the Seed Stories Project
For your Seed Stories Project, you will be researching a plant from a region that is meaningful to you. That plant should be grown for food and/or medicine.
First steps: do a web search to learn about your plant! A variety of types of sources (Wikipedia, regional websites, agricultural sites, blogs for farmers or gardeners, etc.) will work well for this step. Keep a list of useful and potentially useful sources. Be sure to note the scientific name of your plant for further research.
Next steps: use the repositories below and the tabs to the right to continue your research.
General repositories of plant information
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WikipediaA great place to start for basic information! Copy down anything that seems helpful, and be sure to get the Latin/scientific name of the plant as well as any other colloquial names. These will be helpful as search terms.
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USDA Plants DatabaseProvides standardized information about the vascular plants, mosses, liverworts, hornworts, and lichens of the United States and its territories. It includes names, plant symbols, checklists, distributional data, species abstracts, characteristics, images, crop information, automated tools, web links, and references. From the U.S. Department of Agriculture
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WFO The World Flora OnlineWFO is a project to create an open-access web-based compendium of the world’s 400,000 species of vascular plants and mosses. It is a collaborative, international project, building upon existing knowledge and published Floras, checklists and revisions but will also require the collection and generation of new information on poorly known plant groups and plants in unexplored regions.
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Pl@ntNetPl@ntNet is a tool that help you to identify plants with pictures. Includes more than 70,000 illustrated species, explore each species dedicated page, with phenology, altitudes distribution, and trends data. A Citizen Science project.
Edible and medicinal uses
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Plants For A FutureSearch by common or botanical name or family. Includes 8000+ plant pages with information on hardiness zones, care, hazards, physical characteristics, synonyms, habitats, edible uses, medicinal uses, other uses, cultivation details, propagation and more. Plants For A Future is a charitable company registered in England and Wales.
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Native American Ethnobotany DatabaseA Database of Foods, Drugs, Dyes and Fibers of Native American Peoples, Derived from Plants.
Plant hardiness zone map
The USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map is the standard by which gardeners and growers can determine which perennial plants are most likely to thrive at a location. The map is based on the average annual extreme minimum winter temperature, displayed as 10-degree F zones and 5-degree F half zones. A broadband internet connection is recommended for the interactive GIS-based map above.
To find the Plant Hardiness Zone at your location quickly, enter your zip code in the Quick Zip Code Search box in the map (link below), or click anywhere on the map to view the corresponding interactive map. 2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map
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