Plotwright for educators

For educators

Plotwright in extension offices, master-gardener programs, and classrooms

Plotwright is built to be citable. Every plant page carries source provenance per fact, ready-to-paste APA / Chicago / MLA citations, current-and-projected hardiness data, and stable URLs you can drop into a syllabus.

Why Plotwright

Source-cited data

Every fact carries provenance

Plant pages cite individual fields, not just the whole page. Heat-tolerance came from NC State; native-distribution came from Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center; photos cite Wikimedia Commons with the original Creative Commons license and photographer. The /sources catalog enumerates every source family Plotwright uses with citation guidance, license notes, and isolated threads.

Citation built in

"Cite this page" — APA, Chicago, MLA

Every plant page renders a ready-to-paste page-level citation in three academic formats. Page-level citation treats Plotwright as the aggregating publisher and the catalog page as the cited artifact. Per-fact upstream sources stay visible above for cases where a single research-grade citation is more appropriate than the curated page.

Climate-projection aware

Plants graded against today AND 2050

Hardiness zones are a moving target. Every plant detail page shows current and projected zone fit under SSP3-7.0 with confidence bands (per ADR 0009). The /futures interactive widget lets students see which plants in their region are climate-resilient, currently-suited only, or newly-possible by mid-century — a tangible lesson in zone shift.

Open + accessible

Public, mobile-friendly, no sign-in

Plotwright is web-first and static-export-served — every plant, ecoregion, source, and wildlife page is deep-linkable and works on whatever device a student arrives with. No account or paywall to access the catalog. URLs are stable: a syllabus link to /plants/quercus-rubra today still works next semester.

Suggested classroom uses

Climate-shift lesson

Send students to /futures, have them enter a city, screenshot the "Newly possible by 2070" bucket. Discuss which species their region will gain and lose under SSP3-7.0.

Native-plant research project

Pick an ecoregion at /regions, browse the native-plant intersection and wildlife your native plants support, cite specific plant pages in the project report using the "Cite this page" APA / MLA output.

Pollinator-corridor design exercise

Filter the catalog by "Supports monarchs" + "Hosts specialist lepidoptera," compose a regional pollinator border, then walk through the /wildlife/[slug] pages for each supported species to ground the design in ecology.

Source-evaluation exercise

For each plant fact a student wants to use, open the field-level citation to see the upstream source (NC State, LBJ, USDA), evaluate the source’s credibility, and decide whether to cite Plotwright as an aggregator or the upstream source directly.

Outreach + pilots

Run a pilot, request a regional catalog focus, or flag missing sources

Plotwright wants 3–5 extension or master-gardener pilots for the first wave of evaluation: cite a plant page in your next newsletter or workshop handout, tell us where the catalog has gaps for your audience, suggest extension-specific source adapters. Early feedback shapes which ecoregions get the next round of editorial enrichment + which source adapters get prioritised over the NatureServe / Audubon / Xerces queue.

Browse Plotwright sources →

Plotwright

Climate-aware plant planning — every plant checked against your zone now and in 2050.

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