Prairie Blazing Star—CARLI Digital Collections Featured Image

Prairie Blazing Star, from Plants of SIUE (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville) in CARLI Digital Collections

Confession: I’ve secretly admired this collection for a while. The cataloging nerd in me is in awe of the simple yet detailed metadata accompanying the 116 plants (often with multiple images) gorgeously photographed by Ginger Stricklin.

From the document description I can tell you that the species pictured above is Liatris pycnostachya, a.k.a. prairie blazing star, a member of the Asteraceae family. I can also tell you that this plant is an herb native to the prairie, has simple-structured alternately-arranged leaves, blooms July-September, and grows up to five feet in height.

As if that weren’t impressive enough, the collection homepage greets visitors with a plethora of ways to explore: by common name, scientific name, growth-form, habitat, flower color, and more. There’s even an interactive map of campus locations linking to subsets of plants found at those sites.

If you have the winter blues, then take a gander through the Plants of SIUE—they’re always in bloom.

Written by Ellen K. Corrigan, Assistant Professor, Cataloging Services, Booth Library, Eastern Illinois University

For more information about this and other CARLI Digital Collections, visit http://collections.carli.illinois.edu

To learn more about becoming part of CARLI Digital Collections and using CONTENTdm, see http://www.carli.illinois.edu/index.php?page=contentdm and http://wiki.carli.illinois.edu/index.php/Portal:CONTENTdm.