What's that Map? It's BONAP!

In native planting design, it is important to consider where a species originates - not just at a country or regional level, but more specifically at a state or county level - to ensure the planning and use of plant material that is truly native to the area. The Biota of North America Program's (BONAP) species distribution maps are an indispensable source of information for landscape designers and architects who are increasingly tasked with creating native gardens.North Creek has recently partnered with BONAP to share their valuable species distribution maps on our plant detail pages for all straight species found in both our horticultural and Landscape Plug™ (LP50 & LP32) sizes.

Why BONAP?
North Creek had previously used data and maps from the USDA PLANTS website to provide native species information. While the USDA information is useful, they retain a strong agricultural focus that is not ideal for landscape designers. Conversely, the information presented by BONAP takes on an ecological focus, providing databases filled with multitudes of botanical attributes, species distribution maps and images.  Nearly 5 million state and county-level occurrences have been documented from over 150,000 individual references from natural heritage programs, universities, journals, periodicals, and other botanic sources.  Furthermore, we have found the BONAP website to be much easier to use, more interactive and more accurate than the USDA site for our horticultural purposes.

Where can I find these maps?
All of North Creek’s plant detail pages for straight species now contain a species distribution map linked to the BONAP website’s Taxonomic Data Center of North American Vascular Flora.  These maps provide clear information on the presence, native status and rarity of the species at both state and county levels via 13 different color codes. A link to the BONAP map color key is found in the caption directly underneath our linked map image to explain the meaning of each. Clicking the map image itself will direct you to a crisp, large image on the BONAP website to easily view the species’ county level status.We hope you find this new addition to our website both an improvement and of value for your research and planting projects. North Creek wishes to wholeheartedly thank BONAP for allowing us to share these valuable maps with our website visitors, customers, and the entities we partner with on ecological restoration projects. We encourage you to browse the BONAP website to find additional information in their Taxonomic Data Center and North American Plant Atlas, found at http://bonap.org/.

All map images are courtesy: Kartesz, J.T., The Biota of North America Program (BONAP). 2013. Taxonomic Data Center. (http://www.bonap.net/tdc). Chapel Hill, N.C. [maps generated from Kartesz, J.T. 2013. Floristic Synthesis of North America, Version 1.0. Biota of North America Program (BONAP). (in press)]