Encyclopedia of Life
 

I just came across this project after reading an interview with E. O. Wilson (the interview is here:E.O. Wilson: Trying to get people to pay attention to the environment - Cleveland.com
and makes good reading!)

Basically, the project is to document, in one place, every species of living thing - plant and animal. I thought that, with all of the knowledge here of orchid species, others might want to contibute some of what they know.

You can find The Encyclopedia of Life here:
Encyclopedia of Life

and orchids, in particular, here: Orchidaceae - Encyclopedia of Life

It is a really enormous project! Yes, it seems it was basically his idea - and he found the funding to get it started.

As they seem to get a lot of their basic 'listings' of species from ARS GRIN (and other similar databases, such as the Kew Monocot list) I guess it is just a matter of relying on those organizations keeping their information up-to-date. No sense doing the same work someone else is doing!

I don't know how popular he is over here... but for myself, reading 'The Diversity of Life' was one of those books that changes the way you see things.