You know the colour, but not the name, of that flower you came across last Sunday on a walk in the countryside. A Maltese Website for wild plants that has received praise from around the world can help provide the answer.

Researchers and nature-lovers are now able to tap into an interesting Website to find in depth information on national flora. Since 2002 Stephen Mifsud has been building this database with profiles of wild plants in Malta and Gozo in his free time.

Easy to navigate, this Website does much for the promotion of the Maltese Islands' natural beauty. It is clear proof that Malta's accession to the European Union was enriched by another botanical paradise in the Mediterranean region with an amazing diversity of flowering plants.

A simple colour chart found on the Website www.maltawildplants.com helps amateurs learn the names of wildflowers they have encountered while more advanced botanists can access a wealth of information for their studies.

If the flower has a strange shape with a dark colour it is likely to be an orchid. Pale or white colouring could be a number of different species including the winter favourite, French daffodil we call narcis or summer favourite, the sea daffodil.

Poppies and other red flowers compete with Silla and Ilsien l-ghasfur in the red-pink coloured range. The many yellow hues include the endemic Maltese fleabane found on our 50c coin.

Blue-violet tones of blossoms beautifying the Maltese countryside include the medicinal herb borage and the delicate winged larkspur, known in Maltese as Sieq il-Hamiema. Snapdragons and gladioli compete with the hoary rock rose and the November-flowering crocus in the pinkish-purple section. Valuable for its healing properties, the squirting cucumber is identified among the pale yellow flowers. To the amateur's surprise, there are also a few green flowers!

Friar's cowl, in which the Latin part of the name vulgare means common while the Maltese nomenclature suggests a more racy interpretation, is coloured green.

Among those flowers which hardly seem to bloom at all, or have inconspicuous flowers, is a plant which grows along tracks and in fallow fields. The soft, silky grey hairs give rise to its name Denb il-Fenek or hare's tail. Some names translate well while others are distinctly different such as the Blue Pimpernel (Harira Kahla) or Purple Trefoil (Silla tal-Moghoz).

There is an A-Z index of botanical, vernacular and Maltese plant names, a search engine and an interactive online forum where one can post questions and pictures of unidentified wild plants.

Each index is linked to plant profiles, currently about 100 on the site. These contain a wealth of information about each plant, giving local habitat, distribution in other countries, plant family, common names, Latin derivations, illustrative botanical guide, propagation details, pharmacology, chemical constituents, medicinal history and traditional uses in Malta and worldwide.

Mythology or curiosities associated with the plant and edible or other uses are listed in full for a good number of plants. A photo gallery of up to 40 detailed photos accompanies each plant profile, including macro-photography, scanned plant parts and morphological annotated images.

All pictures are captioned in detail, information is referenced and jargon explained in a glossary page.

Making these detailed photographs and varied in-depth information available on the Website should do much to increase interest and awareness in the Maltese Islands' flora and to stimulate tourism in the autumn-spring seasons. All the material about Maltese plants is of excellent quality and can be put to good use by college and university students.

The photographs on this Website are impressive, making it a wonderful tool for introducing the plants to children. As stated by the head of the Department of Biology of the Junior College, the site is a wonderful resource for biology students where they have a good opportunity to observe and learn Maltese plant species in scientific detail with excellent close-up photographs. It also provides an opportunity for people to admire rare species like the orchids, which many have never actually seen.

Visitors of the Website can submit their own information and attributed images to the growing collection. The forum brings professional botanists and hobbyists together from around the world to discuss and share information on the unique and diverse flora of Malta and Gozo.

An international award received in 2005 and the numerous visitor's comments on the Website are testimony to its value. Educators around the world from a fourth grade teacher in the United States to an A-level teacher of Biology in Australia, are just two of the many visitors who have praised the Website.

Dr Hans Christian Weber, Professor of Botany at the University of Marburg in Germany wrote: "This is a most helpful Website that will undoubtedly form the basis of a comprehensive Maltese flora for the Maltese Islands." In the words of Malta's own botanist Dr Edwin Lanfranco, the Website provides "a much needed stimulus to enhance appreciation of our natural heritage and the need to protect it."

An education assistant from Canada writes: "I highly commend you for the enormous task that you chose to undertake. I visited Malta last March-April and I must say I was overwhelmed with the wild flowers, rocks, cliffs. Malta is a beautiful place."

An associate professor in Medicinal Plant Biology from Milan recently contacted the Website asking if it was possible to organise a visit with her students to see the wild flowers of Malta.

A trainee herbalist from Ireland visits Gozo twice a year with an improved knowledge of Maltese wildflowers from the Malta Wild Plants Website. This serves to make her trip "more enjoyable than ever to explore the places where the plants flourish or survive".

It is a shame that some people in Malta still classify wild plants as "weeds" or haxix hazin. Despite their importance (some 20 species are only found on our islands and nowhere else in the world) Maltese flowering species remain relatively unknown and unappreciated. The Malta Wild Plants Website can help change this state of affairs.

A great amount of thought and planning has been put into the site by Web designer and administrator Stephen Mifsud. Earning a distinction for a diploma course in agriculture and digital technology, he has combined art and botany producing an original work highly recommended for both professionals and students.

In its present form the Website is the basis of a comprehensive online flora for Malta, Comino and Gozo. At least 700-800 indigenous species are found on the Maltese Islands, not including alien or non-native species.

Sponsorship is now required to help ensure continuation of the database so as to cover a large portion of these species while maintaining the Malta Wild Plants Website, a national treasure in itself.