The Swingle Plant Anatomy Reference Collection Walter liked Chinese Literature too!

[Bill who putters]

1.  The Swingle Plant Anatomy Reference Collection [pdf] in 1871 in Pennsylvania, Walter Tennyson Swingle grew up with little formal schooling, but he ended up working for well over half a century in the fields of tropical botany and Chinese literature. Created by the University of Miami Libraries and Professor Barbara Whitlock, this digitalarchive brings together primary documents, slides, and other items taken from the Swingle archives. On the homepage, visitors can look through four primary sections, including the "Plant Anatomy Digital Archive" and "Plant Anatomy Animations". In the "Plant Anatomy Digital Archive", visitors can browse over 1700 images from more than 250 species collected from all over the world. Also, visitors can learn about the challenges involved with maintaining such a collection. Moving on, the "Plant Anatomy Animations" are utterly fascinating, as they consist of transforming images of consecutive microtome sections, providing "a new perspective on how plants are constructed in three dimensions." The site is rounded out with a section on Swingle himself, complete with a biography, articles about his work, and a link to some of his publications. [KMG]

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