The University of Florida Herbarium (FLAS) have combined holdings of approximately a half-million specimens.
The collections and estimated holdings include: vascular plants (320,000), bryophytes (70,000), lichens (16,000), fungi (55,000), and wood (16,000). It is the largest scientific plant specimen collection in Florida and the fourth largest in the southeastern United States. The vascular plant, bryophyte, and lichen collections are rich in historical material dating back into the mid-19th century.
Collection Catalogs
The herbarium collections are being cataloged under several projects. At present approximately 50% of our collections are cataloged. Specimens records are distributed via an integrated publishing toolkit (IPT) to a variety of portals (e.g., iDigBio and GBIF).
Vascular plant data are based in two catalogs:
The University of Florida Herbarium Collections Catalog, with ca. 101,000 mostly complete records, predominately includes vascular plants, with some bryophyte and lichens, and all currently cataloged types for those collections. This catalog is cross-linked with the University of Florida Herbarium Type Specimens Catalog where type details such as basionym and bibliographic data are provided. Digital images (ca. 103,000) are available for selected specimens. The images are integrated with the catalog and are also available through a custom search page. A common name search tool provides a walkway to the scientific names used in the catalogs.- The SERNEC project portal (The Keys to the Cabinets) includes additional vascular plant specimen records, mostly from the southeatern United States, with only skeletal data and a specimen image. This catalog also periodically receives vascular plant records from the University of Florida Herbarium Collections Catalog. Therefore, this catalog is the most complete for FLAS vascular plant records.
Type specimen data and high resolution images are also being added to the JSTOR Global Plants web site with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and collaboration with JSTOR. Images for our bryophyte types are currently only available through this web site.
UF Herbarium North American bryophyte and lichen specimens (23,452 bryophytes / 11,601 lichens) are cataloged with label images in the respective national portals:
- Consortium of North American Bryophyte Herbaria (search for UF Herbarium bryophyte specimens)
- Consortium of North American Lichen Herbaria (search for UF Herbarium lichen specimens)
This work was supported under NSF Award #1206394: “Digitization PEN: Digitization of North American Bryophyte and Lichen Specimens from Florida Herbaria.” The award was made as part of the Lichens, Bryophytes and Climate Change NSF Thematic Collections Network project under the National Resource for Digitization of Biological Collections through the Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections program.
The project web page provides more details on the progress of this project.
The algal collection is cataloged in the Macroalgal Herbarium Portal. This work was done by Carol Ann McCormick and staff at the University of North Carolina Herbarium with support by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
The UF Mycological Herbarium is participating in an NSF-funded project to digitize and database as many US macrofungi collections as possible. This project (The Macrofungi Collection Consortium) includes 34 institutions in 24 states. The project began in July 2012 with the goal of capturing data for roughly 1.3 million fungal specimens.
All of our cataloging data is also available through the national resource iDigBio.org.