Geo-coordinates

Monday I was in the herbarium working on student sheets that needed to be filed in the cabinets.  There were some beautiful ones.  I was particularly struck by the vibrancy of some colors.  The cacti seemed particularly well preserved, both the yellows of an Opuntia and the reds of an Echinocereus.   

Afterwards on the walk out, I took the time to photograph some of the trees that still had foliage, even after the snowfall 10 days ago.  I targeted the trees in the BioPark's Tree Tour.  

The process is simple enough: 

1. Take a picture of the entire tree from a reasonable distance.
2. Take a closeup of the leaves. 
3. Take a photo of the bark from a foot or two from the trunk. 
4. Download images onto harddrive.
5. Using IrfanView64 freeware, open the image.
6. Click on 'I' to view the metadata. 
7. Click on 'EXIF data*'. 
8. Click on 'View in Google Maps'.
9. Copy GPS coordinates into spreadsheet. 

Trunk of Bald Cypress*

Eventually the information will be entered into the IrisBG accessions database.  From there, we hope to be able to push this out to our visitors using one of the web-based accessory programs.  Being able to view an interactive map of our plants may make labeling superfluous.  

Of course, being able to simply look at a label is quicker and less intrusive than dealing with your phone.  I'm as guilty as the next person when it comes to being distracted from the beauty of the garden by my gadget.  

Meanwhile, we're waiting on the City graphics people to provide the final design of the Backyard Wildlife Refuge labels.  These will be labels with QR codes that identify plants that the Valle de Oro has included in their list of wildlife-friendly plants for homeowners.  That list is 200+ species, so there will be quite some work when that batch of labels are finally delivered from Lark Labels.