eFloraofIndia appreciated

  • admin_jmgarg


Efloraofindia work appreciated : 23 posts by 10 authors. Attachments (4)
Pleased to share that the work of efloraofindia was appreciated by Professor Susanne Renner, Germany during International Conference at Department of Botany, University of Calcutta on 24-01-2020…

Thanks, Anzar ji, for knowing this.
This has been possible due to hard work of not only all our members over last more than 12 years, but also help and support received from experts from India and all over the world.
Hope more and more taxonomists come out with their collections and put it on efloraofindia along with helping in correct identifications.

Congratulations to Mr. Garg for his marathon efforts and other contributing members.

Hi, Saroj ji
I am rather happy of you overtaking me.  But finally, it is marathon efforts of so many.

Sweet news for all the plant lovers !! More sweeter it being done by a Govt. organisation !!! Three cheers for Garg sir for his untiring work !!!!

Hi, Rakesh ji,
With you, we have to still cross so many bridges. It is just the beginning.

All credit to Garg ji for conceiving, starting, coordinating and continuing the tough task of making database available to the whole world. Garg ji, you are really superhuman.

Hi, Singh ji,
You are the Pitamah. You trained us so well, to climb the ladder.

I agree with Gurcharan sir!!
Can’t imagine how he can spend so much time on this while doing his other works!!

I think it is the collective desire to do something. I remember you looking at all our posts the day you joined and correcting them.
I think it is the desire that we Indians can also do something, where ever we are lagging behind. New India finds new ways.

Congratulations Garg Ji, I Am also so happy seeing this, hope your hard work is started to blooming,
Thanks for sharing Anzar JI,

Hi, Paradesi ji,
We are so happy to have you with us in the team and help us so much.
I am taken back time and again, by your astonishing talent at such a young age. Reminds me of Tanay Bose we had in the beginning.

Really a well deserved mention, thanks Anzar Ji for sharing these clips…
Great work Garg Ji, no doubt about what Pankaj Ji and Gurcharan Sir have said..!!
I fully agree that your untiring efforts are matchless and unimaginable. I wonder how a person can devote that much time, as you are doing to build the database..
I will be lucky again to speak about eFI at BSI Symposium at Kolkata next month..

Thanks, Nidhan ji, for projecting efi at a bigger scale time and again.
Your contributions remain unparalleled.
I am happy to say that now we have images on almost all threads in our site.

This is simply wonderful !!
Hearty congratulations Garg ji. Just as thoughts of Gurcharan ji, Pankaj, Nidhan ji … your stamina, enthusiasm, determination, focus, very simply awes many of us !! You inspire all of us. Best wishes for more such beautiful honours !!
Hi, Dinesh ji,
It is honour for efloraofindia as a team and you are among the top. Your work on vernacular names, is beyond praise.
In fact, I was surprised from where she got my image. Now, in another thread from Anil ji, it became clear that he forwarded the moderators images page to her and she got it from their.

So nice to hear this. Hats off to you Garg sir.

Thanks, Ritesh ji, for being part of the team.

Congratulations Mr. Garg. I am sure you will continue to receive many such well-deserved accolades in future. I am proud to be a part of this community.

Thanks, Ashwini ji, for being part of the team.
We always miss your superlative posts.

eFI is a huge database considering its coverage on India flora. More than half of Indian wild flowering plant wealth is displayed in it. Owing to its coverage/ size it is becoming more and more visible to the people world over. It is nice knowing (through Dr Anzar, Dr Thakur and a FB post of Dr Subir Bandyopadhyay) that eFI was mentioned in the lecture of Dr Renner. She has been communicating with us for the last few years so well aware of the depth of information in eFI. Mentioned by an internationally renowned scientist, many in India will also search it now, particularly the new students of Taxonomy who likes to identify plants by comparing the images [though hard core taxonomists give it less value, and rightly so, in comparison to reading detailed morphological features in literature and detailed examination of the specimens for identification]. BUT we are living in a world where calculated short cuts for progress are taken by many or may be all, without disclosing.

Members have been using this database repeatedly but many more non-members must be using it too. However, we do not have any method to know how many people have visited/ consulted eFI. Experts may have the idea that a ‘visitor count’ type assessment is possible here or not.

My salutations to Garg Ji and Dinesh Ji for developing and executing this epic idea of “a site free to all”. Though, it is only possible by the contributions from many, but each drop is very meticulously accumulated by Garg Ji to develop such a large ocean.

Dr Nidhan Ji, as he has mentioned, will be displaying again beautiful slides on eFI in an international conference in BSI in Feb 2020 where many hard core taxonomists will be listening him. After which there will certainly be a spurt of visitors to eFI.

My best wishes to eFI for days ahead; full of accolades, appreciations and recognition.

Thanks, Rawat ji, for your wonderful thoughts. That is why you are such a wonderful storyteller.
You have always highlighted its importance from the very beginning in very lucid terms.
Ways were shown by you and so many others, in one way or the other, which we are following to our great and thrilling journey of efloraofindia.

Great.

No apt words to appreciate; as we enjoyed, utilized the precious Indian flora ocean created with the efforts of Garg ji

Hi, Lalithamba ji,
We are all proud to have extremely knowledgeable members like you, who have done lot of field work and really understand and value our concept of efloraofindia.

.

It was nice that world renowned phylogeneticist Prof. Sussane Renner discussed about efloraofindia and praised your efforts in building the largest database of Indian plants. This has made efloraofindia popular amongst the botanical community.
FB post by Dr. Subir Bandopadhaya ji:
Attended the inaugural and Technical session – 1 of International Conference on Algae, Fungi and Plants: Systematics to Applications (AFPSA-2020) organised by CAS, Department of Botany, University of Calcutta in collaboration with Botanical Survey of India.
Very happy to meet with Dr. John McNeill for the first time and with Dr. Susanne S. Renner, an expert of Cucurbitaceae, too.
Dr. Renner repeatedly stressed on institutional co-collaboration for taxonomic works.
She praised the websites efloraofindia by Jag Mohan Garg.
She gave an example of a paper on Cucurbit by Anil K. Thakur.
To my utter surprise she acknowledged my help by showing my photograph in her presentation for identifying some collections of Helfer.
The documentary film on Calcutta  University Herbarium (CUH) was very good, particularly the last three slides stating:
A herbarium is an incarnation of God
Tyes are Almighty
and
Taxonomists are worshippers.
The program was organised to grace the 💯 th anniversary of CUH.
I am happy to let all of you know that I helped Dr. Debabrata Maity to update the information regarding CUH in Index Herbariorum.

 

.

My discussions with Prof. Sussane Renner during the first week of January 2020:

I hope you are well.
Later this month, I will be giving a keynote lecture at a meeting celebrating the 100th anniversary of the herbarium CUH (see here https://www.caluniv.ac.in/seminar/seminar-Botany-6-8-19.pdf).
In my talk, I am going to stress the importance of the e-Flora of India, begun by Dr. Garg and of which you are a pillar. Would you let me have a photo of yourself?

I am all fine and hope for the same to you also. Mr. J.M. Garg ji has really done a great job by creating efloraofindia database. It is largest database of Indian plants with more than 3,50,000 photographs of more than 13,000 Indian species (out of ~ 17,500). All the technical contribution on this site is by Mr. J.M. Garg ji. Dr. Gurcharan Singh ji has contributed most numbers of photographs and species. He has also identified large number of unidentified postings. Many other like minded botanists as well as amateurs have contributed to the building of present day database.

I am not a pillar of this site, madam. My contributions are approximately 2,000, so only one of the moderators. I am one of the experts for flora of Himachal Pradesh and ornamental plants.
Madam, if you wish to use the photographs of great contributors, you can use the link below:
Link to moderators: /about-us/moderators
Thank you for the link to your photo. I now put it into my lecture. I am highlighting your little paper on Sicyos angulatus – after you and I emailed about that plant, I found it in Italy — it’s among the worst invasives in Italy now. I love the e-Flora of India project! It’s simply excellent.

Dear Colleague, It is interesting that the Indian government has include the e-flora of India in its official reports to the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD):
****************

Extract from India’s 6th National Report to the CBD on Online Flora work:

·         Taxonomic surveys have been regularly conducted since 1890 by BSI and Flora of India is published regularly.

·         A national / regional flora that provides descriptions of the plant species found in the country available.

Online portal – eFlora of India (efloraindia.gov.in) established
a)       It is an open access online database of India’s plant diversity documents over 18,000 flowering plant species of India. Provides information by family, genus, species and scientific name, Produces real time and useful information for conservation management in specific regions.
b)      Consists of more than 6,000 pages of printed treatment covering around 4,500 taxa belonging to 92 families. Taxonomic treatment of another 9,000 taxa has already been prepared.
All State, District and Regional Flora are being digitized. More than 25,000 pages of rare books and 50,000 archival materials have been digitized.
BSI is in the process of signing MoU with World Flora Online Consortium to share its database
BSI hosted a side event on online flora at CoP 11 to advance this field of work.
In addition to government actions, there are many online databases on flora being maintained by NGOs, academic institutions and civil society organisations.
—————
What is your view on this?

Madam, efloraindia.gov.in is different database maintained by BSI, Govt. of India. This database does not include photographs. Only descriptions and keys to some general are given.
Our database efloraofindia is an effort by civil society.
http://www.wiienvis.nic.in/Database/GlobalSpeciesDatabase

.
I am pleased to announce the release of the plant identification app, “Wildflowers of Mount Everest”, for Apple and Android devices. The resources of eflora of India were valuable and appreciated in the research leading up to this project. Thank you!
The app offers virtual exploration of the beautiful subalpine forests and alpine flowers of Sagarmatha National Park. It was created in partnership with the Flora of Nepal Project, the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation, Nepal, and High Country Apps.
I am attaching an announcement, and would be grateful for your help in sharing this new educational tool with your networks.
With best wishes and hopes that you and your family are staying safe,

Thank you … for forwarding this. I look forward to using this app.