The Botanical Arcade

I love this blog so much, and I am really proud of how far it's come, but I'll be taking a break from posting for a while.

I created this blog originally because I wanted to blend the artistic and scientific imagery associated with specific taxa in a searchable collection. Along the way, I started tagging images in the Biodiversity Heritage Library's Flickr when they were missing the binomial nomenclature to make them easier to search, and in this blog I tried my best to include common names as well. (To keep track of which images I posted, I have an spreadsheet that is thousands of lines long.) I've also added commercial, historical, and mundane imagery to the pile.

My reasoning is pretty simple: I want these images to be easier to find with an amount of specificity that is currently just unavailable. This goal is pretty much unattainable for an individual, but that never took away from the gratification I felt when I was able to ID a particularly elusive botanical illustration, or when I stumbled across an analog source associating motif and ornament with specific plants.

Lately, the way I am choosing to enact this goal has shifted. Instead of trying to create my own (and I use this word very loosely) database, I've been spending my time contributing to one that already exists.

I have a particular interest in begonias, and begonias are, quite frankly, a huge pain in the ass. They elude neat categorization, and common names and horticultural designations are frequently confused with cultivar names and species. They are so easy to hybridize that the question "What kind of begonia is this," can be a Pandora's Box rife with synonyms and sub-categories and nursery-specific copyright. Did I mention Begonia is (at time of writing, according to Wikipedia) is the eighth largest genus of flowering plants?

So for better or for worse, I have started contributing to the website that frequently made identifying old botanical illustrations much, much easier. I have started creating article stubs for various Begonia species for Wikipedia. You can even see what I've been up to if you like.

I'm not sure what that means for The Botanical Arcade. I am really proud of how long I kept up with this project, and I've learned a ton along the way. I'm definitely not abandoning this blog, but it won't necessarily be active for the time being.