Grasses of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago: a DELTA database for interactive identification and illustrated information retrieval

Abstract

A comprehensive re-assessment of grasses in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago is presented as an annotated checklist recognizing 49 taxa. Twenty-five names that have been associated with the flora of the islands are excluded. Information was recorded in a DELTA database. For taxa recognized, the following information is included: common name if applicable, place of valid publication, basionyms, limited synonymy, location of type specimens when known and whether we have seen them, 39 vegetative and 60 floral morphological characters, known chromosome number(s), distribution and habitat data, comments in an annotated checklist, and for many taxa, expanded notes conveying additional information. For 37 of the taxa, their usefulness as environmental indicators is recorded. The above information is also available for some of the excluded taxa; for all of them there are notes explaining why the taxon is excluded. The database is illustrated with 46 maps, 17 line drawings of characters useful for identifications, and photographs of 29 type specimens, 19 herbarium specimens, and 58 photographs of plants in their habitats or close up. The data are available as an INTKEY interactive identification and information-retrieval package for MS-Windows, and as natural-language descriptions in four formats: WWW pages, plain text, PostScript, and HP Laserjet files. Keywords: Poaceae, arctic, taxonomy, WWW, Internet, key.