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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- Which key should you use?
- The illustrated key and the extended key differ in the
number of characters available for searching. After the initial
page, the process is exactly the same.
The illustrated key has a limited number of characters, chosen for their ease
of measurement, lack of ambiguity and usefulness in distinguishing
grass taxa.
The extended key offers a larger range of search characters, including habitat
and distribution.
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Use the illustrated key to generate a list of grasses
matching easily measured features.
This key is most useful with a complete specimen, or
at least an intact flowerhead.
It is also meant as a learning tool for newcomers to
grassses, illustrating important grass characters. For example,
you could use it to see grasses that are spikes, or those with awns
attached on the back, or with glumes longer than the first
floret.
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Use the extended key where you have only a piece of
the grass rather than a complete specimen, or where your
grass has an characteristic that is not included on the
illustrated key, such as a ligule comprised solely of hairs
or multiple spikes.
It is also possible to use the extended key to create a
list of grasses to be expected in a certain habitat type
and/or vegetation zone (such as swamps in the sub-montane
(steppe) zone).
You can also use this key to search by genus, if you are
certain of the genus. This is not recommended as an initial
step in most cases, but it can be very useful as a tool to
confirm identification.
- Why do the illustrations change on the illustrated key?
- Any time your mouse rolls over a green highlighted area, an
interpretive illustration is shown. This is designed to alert new
users to this feature of the website, and for ease of use.
If you find this distracting, you can tab through the fields and
avoid using your mouse.
- How do you know if you have correctly identified your grass?
- It is important to compare your grass carefully with the on-line
description. It is also useful to check a standard flora, such as the
Illustrated Flora of British Columbia, Volume 7 (Douglas et al. 2001).
Final confirmation, especially of rare grasses, should be made by a
qualified botanist by comparison with herbaria specimens.
- What do you do when you don't get a result?
- There are a number of reasons you might not get a result:
Check first to make sure that you searched on what you intended to enter,
reduce the number of characters you enter and compare illustrations of the
result. Remeasure and take an average.
Your sample may have characters which are outside the ranges stored in the
database. Again, start with a small number of characters, taking averages where
possible, and use the illustrate and refine query functions. If you succesfully
identify a grass which is outside the reported ranges, please let us know.
The grass may not be in the database. As we are in the process of adding
all the grasses for BC, you may have found a grass not yet entered or not yet
reported for the area you are in.
- Where do the data come from?
- Written sources include those found in the
reference list.
Original data were contributed by Ken Marr (Calamagrostis data),
Hans Roemer (habitat data) and by the authors and testers measurements of field
and herbarium specimens.
- What grasses are included in the database?
- The initial grass list comes from the Grasses of the Columbia Basin (Stewart
and Hebda, 2000), which described 152 grass species known from the Columbia Basin.
Several species not previously collected from the Columbia Basin have been collected
during the course of this project.
We are adding grasses known or suspected from Northern British Columbia, as
compiled by Sara Steinke. Vancouver Island grasses will be added after that.
- Can I contribute data?
- You can send information to the contacts below for review and possible
inclusion in the database.
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