An
electronic dictionary of English, Latin and Chinese names of tree species (TreeName 1.0) was developed,
providing searches
for names of tree species, genus and family in any of the three languages. The
electronic dictionary contains thousands of names of tree species and brief species descriptions,
providing a rapid, accurate and efficient powerful tool as a dictionary for those working with forestry and plant sciences. The software was developed in Visual C++, using dialogue boxes as the search interface and file system based databases as the framework of the software. Flexible function modules were used in the design. In addition to its strong capacity of providing searches, the software was also designed to allow users to create or update their own customizable database of names of tree species. The software can be extended to cover names of plants, animals, birds, insects and any other biological organisms. The software provides incomparable advantages over the traditional printed dictionary.