| Hello. I am currently copyediting a guidebook to public gardens for National Geographic. While right now I am online trying to determine if there is such a thing as a "Himalyan impatien," I would be most interested to know if you could recommend a comprehensive online list of plants, preferably one that uses common names but could lead me to Latin names as well. Any advice is greatly appreciated! |
| In The New York Botanical Garden Illustrated Encyclopedia of Horticulture, I found reference to an annual impatiens called Impatiens glandulifera (syn. I. roylei) that is described as native to the Himalayas, and naturalized in North America as far northas Canada. Another impatiens native to the Himalayas is I. balfouri. Neither of these had a common name listed. As far as web sites: try http://Gardening.com This site is described as having a plant encyclopedia with over 1500 plants. (I haven't checked it out yet.) There's another one called USDA Plants Project at http://plants.usda.gov that is supposed to have a database and photo gallery of standardized information about plants found in the US. I visited it once and didn't have much luck finding what I wanted. You might also try http://tpoint.net/neighbor/, listed as having 1500 links to gardening sites. I hope this is helpful. |
