[Taxacom] Grady Webster Euphorbiaceae Virtual Herbarium and Publications

[ELLEN DEAN]

Grady Webster Euphorbiaceae Virtual Herbarium and Publications

UC Davis Professor Dr. Grady Webster (1927-2005) was an internationally recognized expert on the Euphorbiaceae who helped countless scientists identify their Euphorbiaceae collections. Due to Dr. Webster’s efforts, the herbarium at the UC Davis Center for Plant Diversity has a large, well-identified collection of Euphorbiaceae (>40,000 specimens). Now, we are pleased to announce that the Grady Webster Euphorbiaceae Virtual Herbarium and Taxonomic Resources site is available for use at our website: http://herbarium.ucdavis.edu/taxonomicresources.html

This website, created with the support of the National Science Foundation (Award no. 1057391), provides specimen images of the genera Croton, Dalechampia, Euphorbia, and Phyllanthus and some of their segregate genera. We have provided at least one specimen image of each species that we house in our herbarium. Specimens were chosen for imaging by Dr. Paul Berry, Dr. Ken Wurdack, and Dr. Scott Armbruster; we thank them for their help.

In addition to the Virtual Herbarium, we have provided a list of Dr. Webster’s publications as well as a list of his unfinished manuscripts with links to pdf versions, if allowed by the journal’s publisher. In addition, we curated all Dr. Webster’s unmounted specimens and databased all specimens associated with his Vascular Flora of Maquipucuna, Ecuador; label data from those specimens are available at our specimen search engine at: http://museums.ucdavis.edu/GIS_dataoption_mdb.aspx

It is our hope that by providing these images, publications, manuscripts, and label data we will both assist and inspire another generation of botanists to continue Grady’s work.

Sincerely, Ellen Dean, Curator, UC Davis Center for Plant Diversity
eadean at ucdavis.edu