Plant Images and Information Databases

• Internet Directory For Botany - excellent image source
• CG Textures has a 'nature' section with many plant images
• Tropical Plants Library has a large number of images, but generally spotty quality
• Meet the Plants - Pacific flora information resource database
• Dendrochronology species database of trees and shrubs has common names in several European languages
• Dave's Garden Plant Database has height and spacing info for some species
• USDA PLANTS Database has a lot of plants, but just a little information about them; plants common in the USA often have detailed characteristics described such as Height and Leaf Retention
• Gernot Katzer's Spice Pages has excellent information on 117 "spice" plants (including coconut and orange) with an index of 4000 common names in about 40 different languages
• GRIN Taxonomy for Plants: Search points to a huge number of species, but thin on details
• Multilingual Multiscript Plant Name Database (MMPND) is a good source for common names
• Henriette's Plant Name Search is a good source of common names
• some good web images were at the Time Life Complete Gardener Encyclopedia Search Page (now gone?)

Yorik's Blender Greenhouse has not just images, but actual 3D models of many plants, modelled with the ngPlant tool.

There is also the free VTP Plant Library.

Commercial Plant Images

• the CGSD RealTexture Library ($2400) contains around a hundred "Tree Profiles"
• 3D Nature's Realtime Foliage Billboard Library CD ($1500) contains 1100 images, of which around 950 are plants.  This is the same library that is included with 3D Nature's WCS/VNS products.
• ImageCELs has several CDs of trees and shrubs, $1000 for the collection
• Digital Nursery sells individual images.  As of 2006, there are around 16 deciduous trees, 24 palms, and a few shrubs.  Images are $3.50 each.
• Modern Medium's Just Textures CD ($100) claims "27 plants and 124 trees"
• CacheForce has "many sorts of plants (100 models, trees at hi and med res)"
• Marlin Studios Virtual Trees & Foliage Maps ($180) has 202 textures with alpha maps
• ArtBeats Wood & Paper ($200) contains some bark textures
• Realworld Imagery has a CD of photo realistic clip art of Desert Shrubs.