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Welcome on Pl@ntUse
This wiki uses Mediawiki and is hosted on Biowikifarm, a consortium of European institutions in the field of biological sciences. This allows to share resources and computer assistance, but also to ensure long term maintenance of the websites. The use of a Creative Commons licence makes it possible for any other organisation to take over the website under the same conditions, in case of failure of one or all the institutions.
You are also invited to join us on a discussion platform about Pl@ntUse, which is accessible at : Pl@ntUse. If you wish to collaborate, go first to this page.
What is Pl@ntUse?
Pl@ntuse is a collaborative space for exchange of information on useful plants and uses of plants. It is not intended to duplicate existing encyclopedias (including Wikipedia), but to offer additional features such as:
- On-line resources that you can reuse
- Portal towards relevant resources available on Internet
- Thematic introductions to literature or any subject of interest
- Species lists (legumes grown in France, world cereals...)
- Popular names or vernacular names
- Portrait galeries of cultivars (varieties)
- Old books and articles on useful plants
- Original publications
- Iconography
- Questions and answers
Differences between Wikipedia and Pl@ntUse
This text has been borrowed partly from the relevant pages of Species-ID, Main Page and How to use Wikipedia.
- You may publish original and authored data, what Wikipedia does not allow.
- Wikipedia removes some pages for "lack of notability." On Pl@ntUse, only the criteria of relevance and traceability are applied.
- Wikipedia publishes syntheses, in which basic data are summarized. We rather aim to publish such basic data, be they original or already published, but not readily available.
- In Wikipedia, content is the result of negotiations between contributors of any kind. This negotiation is regulated by a complex system of contributor's status. In Pl@ntUse, our goal is to target the highest possible scientific quality. The procedures are still under development, but the choice to allow authored pages makes it possible, if necessary, to offer several pages on the same subject to present the views of authors who would disagree.
Pages with content
This website being still new, its content is limited to some sets of pages, elaborated to serve as examples. You can access them directly by clicking on the following links which can go to the French or the English version, depending on the resource:
- Le Floc'h, Tunisian ethnobotany
- Vilmorin-Andrieux, Les meilleurs blés, catalogue of wheats in the early 1900's
- Candolle, Origin of cultivated plants. 1882
- Garcia da Orta, Coloquios dos simples. 1563.
- Introduction to names in the world languages
- Common names of crops in European languages
- Pulses
- Cereals
- Oil plants
- Phaseolus species
- Diospyros species
- Plants used for beads
- Plants used for soap
- Nabatean agriculture
The working method
It is of course scalable and open for discussion. But the basic idea is not to produce consensus summaries. It is rather to provide reliable material to allow everyone to make his/her own synthesis. A priority is to upload the data sets that underlie the work, but are rarely published, forcing everyone to start from scratch.
Any kind of page may be created. Templates have been devised to create pages with a similar structure and with similar content. Such pages are easily accessible through categories or portals. If you intend to upload new types of information, please ask the administrators, who will help you create and use a new template.
As is customary in the scientific community, we mention the author of each contribution. However, most of the contributions may be corrected or updated, as far as they reach consensus. See Help:Authors of contributions
Each page is potentially available in English and French. By default, we are beginning with French, except for books written in English. You can collaborate by translating.