Introduction: The family Asclepiadaceae (ascleps or milkweeds) consists from about 70 tropical and subtropical succulent genera, beside the others such gems like Caralluma, Ceropegia, Hoya, Huernia, Orbea or Stapelia.

Authors: Double CD is a result of cooperation of three specialized societies - British International Asclepiad Society and two German societies - Interessengemeinschaft Asclepiadaceen + Fachgesellschaft für andere Sukkulenten.

Aim: To create the most complete picture database, which should serve as an instrument for identification of different taxons (genus, species, variety). Another criteria was to make CDs which could work on all ordinary computers, without language barriers, opened for all people interested in this plant group. That's why CDs do not contain any program which would bound the functionality only for Windows or other operating system. They also don't contain any text to stay accessible for the people without language abilities. The CDs contain only pictures in JPEG format (*.JPG), which have all necessary data in the title - genus, species, subspecies, variety, field number, etc.

Number of photographs: In first disc there is 1288 photographs, on the other 1469, together respectable 2757 pictures - about 70 genera with more than 800 taxons. Moreover each taxon is represented by more than one photograph - i.e. general view on plant, flower detail, stem detail, plants of various cultural origin or with various field numbers.

System requirements: Arbitrary computer with CD drive and operation system which supports long file titles - e.g. Windows 95 and higher, Mac with later version of operation system, etc. Pictures can be viewed also in computers with older operation system (Windows 3.11, older version of Mac OS), but the file names (the names of taxons) are shortened in that case.

Price: Set of two CDs costs 24 EUR.

Evaluation: The photographs come from various authors of above mentioned societies, which has a negative reflection in non-uniform terminology of presented plants, in quality of some photographs, and also there are some typing errors. The work of editor, who would correct the mistakes is missing. Example of mistakes: Caralluma gemufogana - gemugofana, Caralluma hexacona - hexagona, Caralluma lugardi - lugardii, Caralluma stalagmifera - stalagnifera, Caralluma subterranea - subterranoa, Ceropegia cimicidora - cimiciodora, Ceropegia distincta v. haygartii - haygarthii - haygardii, Ceropegia fimbriata v. connivens - Ceropegia fimbriata ssp. connifens. Despite this faults I assume, that this set of CDs can be classified as a successful amateur work, comparable for example with CD-ROM Sukulenty of Tomas Kriz.