Asteraceae of East Texas (draft)
(SUNFLOWER, ASTER, and DAISY family)

Contributed by
Amanda K. Neill

Publication Date: August 2019
Copyright © 2019 Botanical Research Institute of Texas
Specifications: 8 ½”x 11”, 195 pages, maps, 26 MB digital file

About the Book

 A nearly-final draft of the treatments for the Asteraceae that will be included in the future Illustrated Flora of East Texas, Volume Two-- contributed by Amanda K. Neill, former Director of the BRIT Herbarium, for the Illustrated Flora of East Texas series, Botanical Research Institute of Texas Press.

This draft contains all keys to the tribes, genera, and species of Asteraceae. Distribution maps of all species are included at the end of the treatments. A special acknowledgment goes to Jason Best, Director of Biodiversity Informatics, for generating maps and map pages from raw data. He generated the species distribution maps using a county-level base map from the US Census Bureau Cartographic Boundary Shapefiles (link). Distribution maps were created using a custom Python script to generate each map in QGIS 3.6.

Asteraceae is the largest family in East Texas, with 138 genera and 422 species, representing over 12% of the 3426 species estimated to occur in the region. This family will form a substantial portion of Volume 2 of The Illustrated Flora of East Texas (Acanthaceae–Fabaceae), currently in preparation at BRIT.

About the Author

Amanda K. Neill, M.S., is a a freelance botanist and writer who has been collaborating with BRIT Press on the Illustrated Flora of East Texas project since 2016. Amanda earned a B.S. in horticulture and an M.S. in botany from Texas A&M University, where she conducted a county flora (Neill, A.K. & H.D. Wilson. 2001. The Vascular Flora of Madison County, Texas. Sida, Contributions to Botany 19(4):1083-1121). In addition to her many years studying the flora of Texas, she has conducted botanical research in Jamaica, Costa Rica, Belize, Ecuador, and Peru.

She spent 12 years as the Director of the Herbarium at the Botanical Research Institute of Texas and was instrumental in the formation of the Texas Oklahoma Regional Consortium of Herbaria (TORCH). More recently, she was involved in a multi-year project as contracted botanist to DFW Airport's Operations Department, where she identified plants that were attracting seed-eating birds to the airfield (and airplane flight paths). Her other projects include landscape and floral design, and botanical illustration.

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