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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. Parasitic plants are found in 19 families
containing 277 genera and 4178 species. A group of this size
requires real effort 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.
Questions and comments related to parasitic
plants: 
Questions related to the web server: webmaster@science.siu.edu

SIUC / College of Science / Parasitic Plant Connection /
Why PPC
URL: http://www.parasiticplants.siu.edu/WhyPPC.html
Last updated: 31-Oct-07 / dln