Penn State University Libraries - Horticulture

For technical terms consult printed dictionaries of agricultural science or The Agriculture Dictionary. For horticultural terms, consult printed dictionaries of horticulture. Also the Life Sciences Dictionary from BioTech.

The Internet has produced a tremendous bounty of horticultural sites. This list provides links to just a few of the many and varied sites accessible to all. You may also start by using an Internet Search Engine like Google. Or if you are looking for scholarly journal articles use Google Scholar or CAB, Biological Abstracts or AGRICOLA.

The Consumer Horticulture Center from Penn State's Department of Horticulture provides access to many publications, fact sheets, and other information on planting, growing, and maintaining plants in the garden, home, and landscape.

AgNIC Horticulture provides links to many horticultural sites throughout the United States and focuses on home gardening and the production of flowers, vegetables, ornamentals, herbs, and fruits for home use.

GardenWeb is one of the oldest horticultural sites on the Web. Several hundred community forums help gardeners communicate about many types of plants and gardens. The information presented is not always scientifically verifiable, but many interesting ideas are presented on many gardening challenges. The Hortiplex provides images and information to over 50,000 plants with over 100,000 records.

Perry's Perennial Page provides links, articles, and images of herbaceous perennials.

Plant Information Online from the University of Minnesota helps you locate sources of difficult to find plants and seeds for over 100,000 plants from over 900 North American firms. Links to expert-selected Web sites on growing plants in all regions of the United States and Canada are also included.

PLANTS Database provides standardized information about the vascular plants, mosses, liverworts, hornworts, and lichens native to the United States and its territories is supplied by the US DA's Natural Resource Conservation Service. Entries include names, plant symbols, checklists, distributional data, species abstracts, characteristics, images, plant links, and references.

AGRIS and CARIS Homepage provides access to several databases focusing on international information for the agricultural sciences and technology. It was created by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Agricultural Marketing Resource Center (AgMRC) provides information and links on how to build successful value-added agricultural enterprises. These enterprises include agritourism, fruits, grains and oilseeds, nuts, and specialty crops. Producers may investigate value-added products, explore the market, and create and operate a business.

Bulb.com has everything about bulbs and growing bulbs, and includes photographs, planting information, spring and summer bulbs, and sources of bulbs.

Census of Horticultural Specialties (1998 or 1988) provides detailed statistics on the size and structure of the horticulture industry for planning, policymaking, research, and market analysis.

Compendium of Pesticide Common Names is an electronic compendium intended to provide details of the status of all pesticide common names, together with their systematic chemical names, molecular formula and Chemical Abstracts Registry Numbers.

Crop Protection Reference is a compilation of product labels for agricultural chemicals. It includes brand name, company, common name, product category, site use, and pest use indexes.

Current Research Information System (CRIS) provides short reports of ongoing and recently completed research and education projects in agriculture, food and nutrition, and forestry. Projects are conducted or sponsored by USDA research agencies, state agricultural experiment stations, land-grant universities, other cooperating state institutions, and participants in CSREES-administered grant programs (USDA).

Digital Diagnostics @ OSU provides images and information on insect pests and diseases on field crops, fruit and nuts, vegetables, turfgrass, ornamentals and houseplants.

E-answers accesses publications from the Cooperative Extension Service and Agricultural Experiment Stations. Over 250,000 pages of full text information is indexed.

Flowerweb is a Dutch site intended for the commercial florist. One section, FlowerBase has photographs of many types of flowers and their scientific names, and common names in English, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, French, Swedish, German, and Danish.

Horticulture is an entrance to a diverse site on all aspects of horticulture from the University of Illinois.

NAWQA Pesticide National Synthesis Project. National assessment of pesticides in the streams, rivers, and ground water of the United States.

National Agricultural Statistics Service has current and historical statistics with tables on fruit and vegetable production and prices.

National Gardening includes many articles on flowers, fruits, vegetables, herbs, and ornamentals. Highlighted are home gardening, kids gardening, urban gardening, edible landscaping and celebrating the seasons.

National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS) and Germplasm Resources Information Network (GRIN) are created by a cooperative effort by public and private organizations to preserve the genetic diversity of plants. The entries in GRIN database document information on the germplasm of many economically important plants. (USDA).

NewCROP provides entries to lesser known plant species of potential economic importance.

OrganicGardening finds information for growing plants without using synthetic synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.

The PAN Pesticides Database brings together a diverse array of information on pesticides from many different sources, providing human toxicity (chronic and acute), ecotoxicity and regulatory information for about 5,400 pesticide active ingredients and their transformation products, as well as adjuvants and solvents used in pesticide products.

Patent and Trademark Office. Plant patents may be granted to anyone who has invented or discovered and asexually reproduced any distinct and new variety of plant. Over 10,000 patents have been issued for plants and the majority of these patents are for horticultural specimens. To limit the search to plant patents, use six as the application type.

Pesticide Information Profiles (EXTOXNET) provides summaries of basic pesticide information such as trade names, regulatory status, toxicological effects, ecological effects, environmental fate, physical properties, etc.

Pesticides is the starting point to the web pages of the EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs.

Plants For A Future is a site created in England for rare and unusual plants, the Species Database contains over 7,000 species with details on edible, medicinal, and other uses together with information about their cultivation and habitats.

The Spirit of Gardening has entertaining gardening information such as poems, quotations, and a timeline of the history of gardening.

Tree Care Information Brochures from the International Society of Arboriculture supplies information ranging from selecting new trees to caring for them properly throughout their long lives.

Trends in Agriculture provides articles about important events in U.S. agriculture over the past century. (USDA)

The USDA Economics and Statistics System contains nearly 300 reports and datasets. These resources cover U.S. and international agriculture and related topics. (USDA)

When using information from another source you must give credit to the original author or you are plagiarizing. You give credit by citing the source. Make sure your citation contains everything you would need to backtrack and find the information again. No particular style guide is exclusively used by the plant pathology journals. You might consult Council of Science Editors style.

Plagiarism, whether you copy a paragraph from a book or cut and paste someone else's words from an e-mail, is a violation of Penn State's academic integrity policy. See this Statement on Plagiarism and Academic Dishonesty.