The study of botany has always involved close observation, description, classification and, luckily for us, illustration. The Web is a wonderful and ever-changing source for botanical images. Use these sites for visual and informational reference material, or just for the pleasure of passing dreary winter hours with detailed images of exotic (and local) flora blooming on your computer screen.

Science for Art's Sake

"Meditation (Hope)," Darren Waterston, 1995 oil on wood panel, 24" x 24", Collection of Hank Vigil, Seattle, Washington. Courtesy of Hank Vigil and Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle, Washington. (Click on image for larger picture.)

This terrific traveling show called Botanica: Contemporary Art and the World of Plants, originated by the Tweed Museum of Art, University of Minnesota at Duluth. It's a show of incredibly varied work, from intricate and decorative to political, with lots of images on the Web. Or wander over to the Yale Medical Library, where you can virtually "leaf through" a digitalized version of Fuchs Botany, originally printed in 1545. This medieval herbal includes 516 color plates of medicinally important plants, along with their generic names.

Art for Science's Sake

In Scott's Botanical Links, botanist Scott Russell describes the Virtual Cell Web site built by Matej Lexa at the University of Illinois as "an innovatively constructed image site for the organization of plant cells. For each organelle and topic, there are multiple options for viewing, including stereo vision, anaglyph, standard electron micrographs, and artist's conceptions. This is an extremely visually oriented site that excels in 3-D views."

For more research-oriented browsing, here are two sites to bookmark: The Botanical Society of America and Wildflower Nirvana. Useful to the professional botanist as well as to the home gardener, each features hundreds of well organized, searchable photos, with clear, descriptive text.

Kit Warren is an artist, freelance designer, and gallery curator for HMS Beagle. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.