Chapel Hill, NC – The newly‐released FloraQuest app provides on your mobile device the contents of the 1,320 page Flora of the Southern and Mid‐Atlantic States, a comprehensive guide to the identification, taxonomy, habitats, and distribution of the over 7,000 vascular plants that call a 14‐state region of the southeastern United States home.
Compared to the seven pound book, the nearly weightless app is easier to take on a hike, and it streamlines plant identification by narrowing results to plants found in the mobile device’s general location.
Users can pinpoint and identify specific plants by answering key questions about the plant, and definitions of botanical terms are readily available. The contents can be updated quickly and inexpensively, and users are able to add photos and other information as well.
The FloraQuest app, available at the Apple Store for $7.99, was developed by the UNC Herbarium, a department of the North Carolina Botanical Garden (NCBG), and funded by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research through the Carolina Apps Program.
“The visual keys, geographic key filtering, interactive identification tools and glossary, and powerful search tools make this app a valuable and innovative resource for professionals, amateurs, and students,” said Alan Weakley, director of the UNC Herbarium. Weakley created this app along with Michael Lee, applications analyst in UNC’s Biology Department and Rudy Nash, application designer.
“The FloraQuest app is a great way to get Carolina’s leading research in botany out to a broad diversity of user groups, including botanists, students, foresters, environmental consultants, natural resource professionals, citizen scientists, and more,” said Andy Johns, associate vice chancellor for research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research’s Carolina Apps Program was created to identify innovative opportunities to leverage mobile technology to apply, translate and further UNC‐led research ideas. FloraQuest is the second application developed and released under the program.