Wondering where to order the best marigold seeds? Need gardening information to help your favorite plant survive and thrive? Want to locate a photo of the latest rose you just heard about or a drawing of the heirloom tomato variety your grandma grew in her garden?

Start your search with Plant Information Online, one of the world's largest resources for botanical and horticultural information. Managed by the University of Minnesota Libraries, Plant Information Online is a collection of databases of interest to plant and gardening enthusiasts as well as professional botanists, horticulturists, and plant scholars. Best of all, it's freely available to the public.

Plant Information Online offers a range of resources, including:

• Information on where to purchase plants and seeds, with shipping sources for more than 100,000 plants from nearly 1,000 North American plant suppliers (the largest listing of currently cultivated plants in North America)


• Contact information and links for over 2,000 North American retail and wholesale seed and nursery firms


• Bibliographic details for more than 300,000 images of wild and cultivated plants from around the world in botanical and horticultural books and magazines from 1982 to the present


• Links to expert-selected sites on growing plants in all regions of Canada and the U.S.

Plant Information Online began in 1970 as an unpublished collection of printed resources. It was first published in print form in 1976 and moved to a web-based format in 1997 with access available only to subscribers. The service is now free and available to anyone with access to the Internet.

"We want to make this important resource available to the widest audience possible," said librarian Kathy Allen, editor of the service. "Previous subscribers have found Plant Information Online to be an invaluable tool to find information on many of the world’s plants."