Key to Utah's Violets

[Mary Barkworth]

Harvey Ballard has made available a draft key to Utah's Violets.  It can be
obtained by anonymous FTP from stipoid.convert at cc.usu.edu
His treatment differs from published treatments primarily in recognizing
several of the species that have been included within V. purpurea in recent
treatments.  Illustrations and DELTA files will be made available shortly.
The DELTA files were made in the "quick and dirty" mode and were developed
solely for the purpose of identification - and demonstrating to my class the
advantages of a DELTA type key.

As a comment on recent discussions concerning the efficacy of DELTA for Q&D
keys:  My students wanted to know when the whole flora will be available in
this manner.  Developing the files took about 4 hours (including typing
time); developing the taxonomic knowledge that made it possible to develop
the files took several years; developing the knowledge of DELTA required to
make the file took about a week several years ago, followed by several
questions when I started getting interested in the program again last year.
DELTA definitely can be used, and beneficially used, in a Q&D mode.  It is
much easier if all the taxa being considered are very similar, e.g., species
of Viola.  The only reason the files will not be put up until next week is
that I want to clean up some glaring uglinesses, but must give priority to a
lab midterm.

ÿÿ    Key to Utah's Violets                                                    @