DOCUMENTATION AND KEYS
BY
BANGAMOTI HANSDA ASSISTANT PROFESSOR DEPARTMENT OF BOTANY
NARAJOLE RAJ COLLEGE
DOCUMENTAION
Documentation refers to the creation of scientific information, and bringing out the same in the form of a scientific publication. This enables dissemination of information to various users, and its reproduction and retrieval. Taxonomic and systematic research can be documented/ published in various forms, such as floras, monographs, or in journals (traditionally printed and now online version also).
FLORA
Flora is the document of all plant species in a given geographic area. Flora consists of total number of plant species in an area and gives information about flowering season, fruiting season and distribution for the given geographic area. It also provides details on rare and endemic species of that area. Example: Flora of Tamil Nadu Carnatic by K.M.Matthew. Floras are categorized based on the scope and area covered.
Local Flora
It covers the limited areas, usually state, country, city or mountain range.
Example: ‘Flora of Thiruvannamalai District’ by R. Vijaysankar, K.
Ravikumar and P. Ravichandran.
Regional Flora
It includes large geographical area or a botanical region. Example: ‘Flora of Tamil Nadu’ Carnatic by K.M.Matthew (1983), ‘Flora of Madras
Presidency’ by J.S. Gamble and Fischer.
Continental Flora
This flora covers the entire continent.
Example: ‘Flora of Europaea’ by D.A.Web.
Electronic Floras (e - floras)
It is nothing but the digitized form of a flora published online.
Example: ‘e – Flora China’. This provides the information and also functions as an identification tool.
TAXONOMIC KEYS
A taxonomic key is a simple tool used to identify a specific object.
A taxonomic key is one of the most useful tools available to scientists trying to identify an unknown organism. Systematists rely on keys to help identify known organisms and determine whether they have discovered a new organism entirely.
Single Access Key Keys
Multi Access Key
Types of keys
Single Access Key
Single Access Key also called dichotomous key. It consists of a sequence of two contrasting statements. A pair of contrasting statements is known
as couplet. Each statement is known as lead. The plant is correctly identified with keys by narrowing down the characters found in plant.
Multi Access Key
Multi Access Key also termed as Polyclave or Multi-entry key. It consists of a list of numerous character states. The user selects all states that match the specimen. Polyclave keys are implemented by a computer algorithm.
