[Taxacom] FW: Kew's Economic Botany Collection newly online

[Mark Nesbitt]

The Economic Botany Collection at Kew Gardens opened in 1847 with the aim of showing uses of plants around the world. Its 85,000 specimens include plant raw materials and ethnographic artefacts. In April 2012 the collection database was placed online at: http://apps.kew.org/ecbot/search

The main search box covers all text in the database and works well for botanical names, collector surnames, and countries. The advanced search box allows more powerful searches using standardised terms for geography, use and plant part. Botanical names are not always up-to-date so it might be necessary to search synonyms too.

For free-text fields, including collector/donor name, data cleaning is (slowly) in progress; no attempt has been made to  proof-read all the notes, which include original spellings transcribed in the 1980s from object documentation. About 2000 specimens have photographs online.

Most specimens have extensive documentation, held in Kew's Archives, now partly digitised (http://plants.jstor.org/search?t 21) and catalogued (http://www.calmview.eu/kew/calmview/).

As well as useful plants, the EBC also holds large plant parts such as palms and cycads, too large for herbarium storage. Recent publications suggest that the EBC also holds an unexpectedly large number of type specimens: I.M. Turner. 2011. The contribution of Jonathan Pereira (1804 - 1853) to plant taxonomy. Kew Bulletin 66: 581-585; A.S. George. 2010. Australian type material in the Economic Botany Collection, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Muelleria 28: 163-171.

Mark

Dr Mark Nesbitt 
Curator, Economic Botany Collection

Herbarium
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Richmond Surrey TW9 3AE? 
United Kingdom

Blog: http://www.kew.org/news/kew-blogs/economic-botany/index.htm
Economic Botany Collection: www.kew.org/collections/ecbot