Why The Parasitic Plant Connection?

The motivation to assemble this series of pages is both self-serving and altruistic. For myself, I would like to use these pages as a repository of information on parasitic plants as an aid to my research program. There are over 4300 species of parasitic plants, thus a real effort is required to keep the information organized (something systematists are compelled to do!). I began organizing information about parasitic plants many years ago using a Macintosh program called HyperCard. From this came a series of "stacks" (files) containing B & W graphical images, species lists, distribution maps, etc. for a selected group of parasitic plants. This series of stacks I called"HyperParasite."

Around 1990 it became clear to me that the internet was the way to both archive information and distribute it to the public. The basic organization of the HyperParasite stacks was used to construct the first version of The Parasitic Plant Connection web site. During the course of traveling to the far corners of the earth to collect parasitic plants, I have assembled a rather sizable collection of photographs of these unusual plants. The ability to post on the WWW color photographs of spectacular plants such as Rafflesia made this site both aesthetically appealing as well as scientifically useful. With such images, and with those kindly made available by colleagues, I hope to share with others the joy of studying these fantastic plants.

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