At the site, interested people can find the correct common and scientific names of plants as well as information about their uses. The economic coverage includes plants or plant products that are traded, regulated, or otherwise used in international commerce. Many plants important to regional commerce of larger countries are also included as well as plants with recognized potential for widespread economic use or for negative economic impact, like weeds and poisonous plants. Another advantage of the web site over the book is the user's ability to search for a plant by country, state, or geographical distribution.
Users can produce a condensed report that's similar to the book's format.
Or they can click on links to more detailed information on each species, such as scientific and common names, synonyms, native distribution, and botanical uses. Each name has a unique identifying code number, a reference to the original description, and other pertinent taxonomic literature. And we have developed Spanish and Portuguese versions of many of our web pages, with French and German ones on the way. Several state sites have drawings or pictures of the weeds and other information of interest to scientists, gardeners, and farmers. The new web pages are part of the GRIN database, which includes over 62,000 botanical names of mainly economic plants.