About This Website
Below are the completed (or preliminary) webpages.
• "About" menu (under "Other" in the tablet/cellphone menu): all webpages
• "Keys" menu: all webpages for dichotomous and multi-access keys
• "Names & Taxa" menu (called "Taxa" in the tablet/cellphone menu): "Accepted names", "Uncertain names", and "Hybrid names and formulas" webpages are available.
• Taxon webpages are complete for Cubelium concolor, two native species of Pombalia, all Viola taxa in northeastern North America, and a few Viola taxa in the Great Plains and southeastern U.S.
• "History & Lit" menu (under "Other" in the tablet/cellphone menu): "Taxonomic history" (preliminary), "Literature"
• "Our Research" menu (under "Other" in the tablet/cellphone menu): "Integrative taxonomy" (with a focus on acaulescent blue violets)
• "Useful Links" menu (under "Other" in the tablet/cellphone menu): all websites
In addition, the website is now "responsive", with noticeable changes to the homepage and some webpages when the screen width of your device shrinks to 1100px (the maximum width of most vertically held tablets).
Our current understanding of the taxa as currently circumscribed and described here has been incorporated into a submitted treatment for Rob Naczi's forthcoming "New Manual of Vascular Plants of Northeastern United States and Canada" and in a submitted treatment co-authored with Bruce Sorrie and Alan Weakley in the imminent new version of Weakley's online "Flora of the Southeastern United States". Our knowledge of the violets in our region is evolving quickly, as we continue to gather evidence to detect, delineate and describe the biological diversity we find in the field and herbarium (see our approach in "Integrative taxonomy" under the "Our Research" menu, which is in the "Other" cellphone/table menu). In spite of our trepidation to post everything we (think we) know here, even when our understanding is preliminary and very subject to change with new evidence, we present it here with the hope that having access to our cumulative, current knowledge will allow you to identify and learn about our violet flora. Hopefully, it will motivate you to look more closely at the violets and to join us in studying them. We also offer a plea that no use of any information or images in this website be used without explicit approval by Harvey Ballard or his co-authors or contributors.
This website will continue to evolve rather quickly (I hope). We will announce new changes on the "News" page under "About", which is under "Other" in the tablet/cellphone menu, each time we have added something significant. Our website is sponsored and authored collectively by the "Violet Systematics Research Group" led by Harvey Ballard, in the Department of Environmental and Plant Biology, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio. Individual webpages (especially taxon webpages) are authored by individuals who are completing degrees in our department or have done so. Most images of plants and distribution maps have been graciously provided by others with permission, or permission explicitly granted with the image at the source. Each image is credited in the caption below it. See "Disclaimers and Acknowledgments" under the "About" menu for more information on authors and contributors to this website.
Below are tasks organized by priority for completion of the planned components of the website during the next few months.
• First priority (goal: finish by 25 July)--ALL OBJECTIVES MET.
• Second priority (goal: finish by 1 October)--complete "All names", "Morphology", "Collecting violets" and "Help us study violets" webpages; taxon webpages for taxa in the Southeast and Great Plains.
• Third priority (goal: finish by 1 January, 2021)--complete "Genera and Viola groups" webpage; incorporate information from floras in the Southeast and Great Plains; add type information to all remaining names on taxon wepages; complete multi-access keys to taxa.
• Fourth priority (goal: finish by 1 May, 2021)--revise "Integrative taxonomy", "Taxonomic history" and "Specialists" webpages; complete "Projects" and "Funding & support" webpages, as well as remaining webpages under the "Biology" menu; add theses and dissertations to the "Literature" webpage; create cross-page hyperlinks for literature, names, etc.; link literature to references references across the website.