Introduction

Welcome to the Gymnosperm Database, the web's premier source of information on conifers and their allies. Since we went online on 1997, the Database has attracted worldwide attention as a readily accessible, scientifically accurate source of information on the classification, description, ecology and uses of this culturally and ecologically important group of plants. This home page gives some hints about how to navigate the Database, as well as providing background information for the curious.

There are four major sections of the site:

Species	In-depth descriptions of all the families, genera, and species of gymnosperms. For each species I provide information on classification, description, ecology, ethnobotany, and various other topics of interest. This section comprises about 90% of the site.
Topics	Things that are not strictly tied to a particular species. For instance, it includes pages on the gymnosperms of Australia, the oldest trees in the world, and accounts of some of my field excursions. If you are just interested in exploring the site, I encourage you to check out Topics.
Bookstore	Most of the books sold here are linked through Amazon, and if you buy them through this site, the price is the same to you but some of the proceeds come to me, to help support the Database. Some books aren't available through Amazon but I list them anyway, because in the Bookstore I try to give you access to every important gymnosperm publication currently in print.
Aljos Farjon Gallery	Aljos Farjon is currently the dean of conifer biology. Besides heading the IUCN's conifer conservation group and authoring eleven books on conifers as well as countless smaller publications, he is also an artist whose pen-and-ink drawings of conifers have adorned many of his books. Many of those drawings are now available as limited edition prints, for sale only through this site. The Gallery currently show 20 of his best drawings.

Background on the Site

The Gymnosperm Database was established as an online entity in the summer of 1997 and has since grown steadily, getting its own URL (Conifers.org) in the summer of 1999. Currently the Database provides basic information (sometimes only a name) for all species and higher-ranked taxa of the gymnosperms, i.e., conifers, cycads, and their allies. You enter the taxonomic tree at the Family level and then navigate to the Genus, Species or sometimes Variety levels. At each level, information on the taxon at hand is provided, along with bibliographic citations that will take you to more detailed information about the taxon. If you are using a browser that does not support forms, a site map is provided Here.

How to Use This Site

If you have a specific question, use the search box at left. Otherwise, I suggest that you start with the Topics page. If you prefer, you are welcome to browse the species accounts, although I caution you that many of them are pretty skimpy. If you want to see some of the most complete and detailed descriptions, a good place to start is the Topics pages on Gymnosperms of Alta California, Gymnosperms of Australia, and Gymnosperms of New Zealand. Those three parts of the world are pretty well covered in the Database, as are Canada and the western United States (see "Place Names", below). Southeast Asia and adjacent Oceania are pretty well covered, though mostly based on fairly old information. Coverage of Europe and Asia is uneven, with some species well docummented and others almost blank. Africa and South America, which have few conifers, are also very unevenly covered. Cycads are largely neglected because an excellent site, The Cycad Pages, exists to provide the same sort of information that I would otherwise have to collect. The Gnetales are covered here better than anywhere else on the web - but that isn't saying much.

Place Names

For all place names I use the common English name (e.g., "Spain" instead of "España"). I try to name every nation that each species is native to. For species native to Canada, the United States, Mexico, Australia, and China, I try to name every state or province that each species is native to. Abbreviations are not used. This information will help you in geographic searches. For instance, to find all the gymnosperms native to Iowa, simply type in the search term "Iowa."

Computer stuff

In order to navigate through the various taxa, you need to use a browser that supports forms and javascript. It seems to work well in most popular graphic browsers, but frankly, I don't do formal testing on anything but Firefox, since I regard it as in many ways the best browser around.

The Database is not a "real" database. I tried running it with Microsoft Access, but over a period of years, I gradually decided that the uniform presentation and organization provided by a database is not especially useful for the purposes of the Gymnosperm Database. So, nowadays it simply consists of a large collection of HTML files (mostly W3C compliant HTML 4.01, put together with PHP). The benefit of this is that I spend more time writing about gymnosperms and less time programming. The website code is mostly written with BBEdit, which is not free but is very good if you're using a Mac (which I have been since 2006).

Links to citations pop up an a small window, like this. Links to photos also generally pop up in a window, though a few take you offsite. Other onsite links take you directly to the linked page, while offsite links generally open in a new browser window (unless your browser is set to open new windows in a new tab).

One consequence of the longevity of the database is that the graphics quality varies quite a bit. When I started out, everybody was working on a 640×480 pixel screen and images larger than 20 KB took forever to download. So, some of the old images on the site are quite small. Currently the site is laid out to fit in an 1024×768 window and some of the pictures are over 100 KB, although pictures larger than 10 KB are only shown in pop-up windows. Digital photography from 2001 to 2003 was mostly taken using an Olympus C700Z, shooting high-definition JPGs at 1600×1200 resolution. From 2004 to 2009 it was a 5 megapixel Olympus C5060, which was a great camera, built like a brick. Now I have a 10 megapixel Olympus E620, which takes better pictures than any other camera I've owned in 35 years of SLR photography.

Appeal for volunteer assistance

People sometimes write and say, "Who writes the database?" The answer is, I do. I have assembled most of the database and done essentially all of the computer-based work: typing, scanning images, writing code, etc. Any assistance IS WELCOMED. To date I have received helpful advice from a variety of recognized taxonomic authorities, as well as information on individual taxa from persons scattered across the globe. Indeed, the correspondence related to this site has itself provided great pleasure and much insight to the manifold problems extant in gymnosperm taxonomy, and provides one of the greatest rewards of maintaining this site. However, if you would like to increase those rewards, you could buy some books (from Amazon.com) via my gateway/bookstore located HERE.