Floral Mapping is a virtual collage and map of my own "DNA" based on what plants and flowers grow in places where my family and I have lived. Using images of preserved plants from the online resource SEINet, Floral Mapping creates a “family tree” of plants that span continents and generations, drawing connections between the places they were found, the years they were collected, and the plants themselves.

By creating this resource I hope to learn for myself, and illustrate for others, a new way of knowing oneself outside of traditional bordered lands. I also am hoping to find connections between seemingly unrelated parts of my heritage, and encourage everyone to think about our bloodlines as they relate to the natural elements of the earth, not just the human-made delineations of borders, heritage and culture.

To view the project (still in progress) click below:

((Floral Mapping is an ongoing project made possible with a generous grant from the Playbook Imagination fund.))

More about SEINet (from their website): The SEINet data portal was created to serve as a gateway to distributed data resources of interest to the environmental research community within Arizona and New Mexico. Through a common web interface, we offer tools to locate, access and work with a variety of data. SEINet is more than just a web site - it is a suite of data access technologies and a distributed network of collections, museums and agencies that provide environmental information.

All info and imagery collected from https://swbiodiversity.org/seinet/ unless otherwise noted.