WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Purdue University is rolling out a comprehensive online interactive database of the campuswide Purdue Arboretum for students and visitors to enhance their learning and appreciation for plants and the environment.
The Purdue Arboretum Explorer
allows mobile device users to quickly locate and learn about the nearly
779 types of trees, shrubs and vines that comprise over 40,000 plants
that are mapped throughout campus. It also allows users to learn about
the university’s environmental stewardship initiatives as well as
historical landmarks, campus art, and other landscape features at
Purdue.
The goal of the arboretum is to enhance the
university’s educational, research and outreach mission, promote
environmental sustainability and add to the beauty of the 956-acre
campus.
“It is an opportunity to reach out not only to
our students and researchers but to the public so they can interact with
nature and better appreciate plants,” said Paul Siciliano Jr., a professor of horticulture and landscape architecture and the arboretum’s director.
The arboretum is a “living laboratory” and
“classroom” for many courses taught in the life science fields such as
horticulture, landscape architecture, botany, forestry, plant pathology
and entomology as well as in the earth sciences and liberal arts.
In addition, elementary and secondary school
students as well as community groups and other visitors benefit from the
arboretum as they often use the campus to study plants and learn about
sustainable landscape practices by exploring the many “green”
initiatives implemented throughout the grounds.
Michael Gulich,
director of university sustainability, called the Purdue Arboretum
Explorer “an unparalleled educational resource for our campus
community.”
“It is a great example of the living laboratory
initiative, where students and faculty can be involved with the ongoing
sustainable maintenance of a world-class arboretum,” Gulich said.
The arboretum features signage of the 779 unique
taxa – species, subspecies, variety, formas and cultivars – on campus so
they can be readily identified. The signs are labeled with QR codes
that anyone can scan with a mobile phone and link to that plant’s
information in the Purdue Arboretum Explorer database on the arboretum’s
website http://www.arboretum.purdue.edu/.
Plants can be searched by their common or scientific name or by special
characteristics such as flower color, leaf color and plant function.
Users also can enter a set of dates to learn which plants are likely to
be flowering or fruiting during that time.
At least 25 students have been involved with the
arboretum since its inception in 2008, mapping the location of plants
throughout the university, installing plant signage, taking pictures of
the plants and entering plants’ characteristics in the database, among
other arboretum tasks.
“The best part about this project is the
involvement of students,” Siciliano said. “It’s through the hard work
and dedication of the students that this has been a success.”
Siciliano has received inquiries from faculty
members at other universities throughout the country inquiring about how
to start a similar online plant database of their campus landscape.
The arboretum has regularly updated and extended its woody plant inventory and obtained international accreditation through Arbnet, administered through the Morton Arboretum. The university has earned the Tree Campus USA title, administered through the Arbor Day Foundation, every year since 2009.
In the fall of 2013, the arboretum was integrated
into the woody landscape plants (HORT 217) class and began implementing
a small native woody plants nursery at Purdue’s Meigs Research Farm,
about 10 miles south of Lafayette. This nursery will serve as a resource
for the planting of Indiana native trees throughout the campus
landscape.
Writer: Keith Robinson, 765-494-2722, robins89@purdue.edu
Sources: Paul Siciliano Jr., 765-494-1346, siciliano@purdue.edu
Michael Gulich, 765-494-7030, mgulich@purdue.edu
Ag Communications: (765) 494-2722;
Keith Robinson, robins89@purdue.edu
Agriculture News Page
External Link: http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2014/Q4/purdue-arboretum-offers-online-database-of-plants-on-campus.htmlhttp://