Dear Listserv,

My aim is to compile plant traits for a list of species from the USDA 
Plants database.
Examples from the list include

Poa pratensis
Festuca idahoensis
Astragalus miser

In R, I started with this:

library(RCurl)
###############################################
plants<-'http://plants.usda.gov/java/nameSearch?'
###############################################
url<-paste('mode=','sciname','&keywordquery=','Festuca baffinensis',sep='')
sp.url<-paste(plants,url,sep='')

###the link goes to the correct webpage
http://plants.usda.gov/java/nameSearch?mode=sciname&keywordquery=Festuca 
baffinensis 
<http://plants.usda.gov/java/nameSearch?mode=sciname&keywordquery=Festuca%20baffinensis>

p1<-getURL(sp.url)


I would like to extract the following text from the page:
Symbol: 		FEBA 	
Group: 		Monocot 	
Family: 		Poaceae 	
Duration: 		Perennial 	
Growth Habit: <http://plants.usda.gov/java/nameSearch#> 		Graminoid 	
Native Status: <http://plants.usda.gov/java/nameSearch#> 		
L48 		N
AK 		N
CAN 		N
GL 		N



However I can't seem to find it after parsing the string? Is this 
related to Java script?

Can someone help me extract this information.
Thanks for the help!

Sincerely,
Tim Seipel








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