The good news is that Biology 83 was to be the first volume of a periodical index to published literature in the biological sciences. It was designed to “provide immediate access to titles of research papers according to subject, higher taxonomy, or author name.” All of the papers indexed were published in 1983, in some 250 journals. I found every botany journal to be on the list except Rhododra. Looking up a citation in this index would be a little easier (and a lot less expensive) than going to Biological Abstracts, though some of the categories are not broken down as far in Biology 83.