Illustrated Flora of East Texas Online

Aug 2019 Update: Asteraceae of East Texas now released

Background

In 2006, Austin College and the Botanical Research Institute of Texas released their second major collaborative flora.

The first volume covers ferns, gymnosperms, and monocots. Dicots will follow in Vol. 2 (ca. 2019) and Vol. 3 (ca. 2020). Geographic coverage is of 87 counties; a checklist of the known East Texas plants includes more than 3000 species. The introduction has discussions of geology and geological history, effects of glaciation on the vegetation, soils, settlement and presettlement history, and climate, and it presents extensive information on the Big Thicket and Caddo Lake areas. Also featured are a distribution map for each species, indices for selection of native species that attract birds, help to foresters in teaching bark, resin, fruit, and twig characteristics of the principal timber species, and a quick guide to the common poisonous and medicinal plants.

The three-volume flora will ultimately provide keys, descriptions, illustrations, and distribution maps for more than 3900 native and naturalized species of the 87-county region broadly defined as East Texas (Pineywoods, Post Oak Savanna, Blackland Prairie, and Red River area). Volume 1 (2006) covers ferns, gymnosperms, and monocots, along with an extensive introduction and numerous appendices. Pdfs of Volume 1 can be found at the bottom of this page.

Volume 2 is currently being written (ca. 2025) and will cover dicots in the families Acanthaceae-Fabaceae. Volume 3 (ca. 2030) will cover dicots in the families Fagaceae-Zygophyllaceae.

New Release

In appreciation of the patience shown by all those who have eagerly awaited the publication of volumes 2 and 3, we hereby release the draft treatment of East Texas Asteraceae as a free download, which includes sunflowers, asters, daisies, and all the “darn yellow composites” that many people struggle to identify.

Distribution maps of all species are included at the end of the treatments. A special acknowledgment goes to Jason Best, Director of Biodiversity Informatics, for generating maps and map pages from raw data. He generated the species distribution maps using a county-level base map from the US Census Bureau Cartographic Boundary Shapefiles (link). Distribution maps were created using a custom Python script to generate each map in QGIS 3.6.

The Asteraceae of East Texas draft is available as a digital download here.

This online presentation of the Illustrated Flora of East Texas, Volume 1 includes keys, descriptions, and illustrations for numerous species. They are all available here for free in PDF format. Extensive introductory materials, color photographs, appendices, glossary, literature cited, and an index can be accessed below – a total of over 1500 pages.