This is a gallery of images of herbarium specimens of many of the plant species, subspecies and varieties that are known to occur in Travis County, Texas, home of The University of Texas at Austin. They are presented here in the hope that they may be of help in the identification of plant species of Travis County and central Texas. The specific specimens imaged and presented here are not necessarily from Travis Co., because specimens from other counties sometimes are of higher quality or show important aspects of the species better. However, every species or infraspecific taxon represented by an image here is represented by a Travis Co. specimen in the University of Texas Herbarium and/or the Lundell Herbarium of the Plant Resources Center (PRC).
An incomplete list of Travis County families, genera, species and infraspecific taxa is presented as an aid to locating images. This list is based entirely on the taxa documented for Travis County in the PRC collections and is thus not a complete list of all Travis County species and infraspecific taxa. A more complete, annotated list of the Travis County flora has been compiled by Bill Carr, online on our website in its current (2008) version as "An Annotated Checklist of the Vascular Plants of Travis County" [to download the complete version of Carr's 2008 document (3.4 MB)].
Carr's list is a work in progress and differs in many taxonomic and nomenclatural details from the system followed in the PRC, which is based on B. L. Turner's Atlas of the Vascular Plants of Texas (2003) and subsequent modifications and additions by Turner and others. Thus, the two lists cannot be directly compared easily at present. Future work on both lists will lead to easier cross-referencing.
Imaging of specimens for this project was done in two phases, and the resulting images for different species differ as a result. 425 images are the result of the Wildflowers of Texas project and were done by Uri Kolodney and his digitization group at the University of Texas Libraries using a digibook scanner; 282 of those images are also available through the Wildflowers site. 645 images were done by Anne Van Nest and Amber Schoneman of the Plant Resources Center with a digital camera, using a setup design and protocols based on those originally used by the New York Botanical Garden and modified for use at the PRC by Dr. José Panero. All Web production has been done by Bob Harms.
As of May 2008, this gallery includes 1070 images representing 827 species and infraspecific taxa. The total flora of the county, according to Carr's list, is over 1500 species; thus, only about 55% of the flora is represented by images here. Many families are well represented, while others, including major families like Poaceae, are still completely absent in the gallery. Future imaging will fill these gaps.
The images presented here may be freely used for non-commercial purposes except as provided below. Copyright for all images is held by the Plant Resources Center of the University of Texas at Austin. Commercial use of any images, or publication of more than five images under any circumstances, requires permission from the Plant Resources Center.
Contact information:Curator
Plant Resources Center
University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station F0404
Austin, Texas 78712-0471