The Steere Herbarium of The New York Botanical Garden holds approximately 500,000 vascular plant specimens that were collected in Brazil, of which about 11,000 are types. Our goal is to catalog all Brazilian vascular plant specimens by 2012. Cataloging of specimens from the eastern states was completed with funding provided by by NSF grant DBI 9987500 (J. Kallunki & T. Kirchgessner, P.Is.) between 2000--2003 and that of the specimens from the central and northeastern states by NSF grant DBI 0543335 (J. Kallunki & E. Ashley P.Is., 2006-2010). NSF grant DBI 0543335 is currently funding cataloging of specimens from the central and northeastern states (J. Kallunki & E. Ashley P.Is., 2006-2009). In August 2008, we began a three year project to catalog the approximately 350,000 specimens from Amazonian Brazil (funded by NSF grant DBI 0749751, B. Thiers & W. Thomas, P.I.s), in collaboration with the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (INPA). Already cataloged from Amazonian Brazil are approximately 11,500 specimens from Acre, and all types.
The Herbarium includes the first set of Brazilian collections made by NYBG scientists and their collaborators, in particular, those made by G. T. Prance primarily in the Amazon Basin, H. S. Irwin and collaborators in the Planalto (the upland interior of Brazil), and B. Maguire and collaborators in northern and eastern Brazil. It includes duplicates of the 48,900 vascular plant collections made by the 110 collectors from the U.S.A. and Brazil on expeditions during the Projeto Flora Amazonica, a binational collaboration under the direction of G. T. Prance and funded by NSF (1977-1988) and the Brazilian government. A large set of Amazonian collections made by B. A. Krukoff in 1930-1940 are housed at the NYBG Herbarium. Current NYBG scientists' contributions to the the Brazilian collection include specimens from Acre collected by D. Daly and his collaborators at the University of Acre, specimens from eastern and Amazonian Brazil collected by Scott Mori, and specimens from the Atlantic coastal forest collected by W. Thomas and his collaborators at the Cacao Research Center in Bahia.
Through exchange programs with many European and Brazilian herbaria, the Herbarium has obtained a substantial number of historical specimens collected in Brazil by Blanchet, Ducke, Fróes, Gardner, Glaziou, Riedel, Sellow, Spruce, and Ule and excellent representative sets of contemporary collections made by Harley, Ratter, Hatschbach, and many collectors at the INPA herbarium.
Specimen records can be obtained by selecting from the checklist of families or by searching the database directly. Making a selection from the family checklist will return a list of genera and species in that family. Selecting a genus or species name will return a list of specimen records, for each of which additional information can be obtained by clicking the box to the right of the listed record. Searching the database directly will return a similar list of specimen records.
The Catalogue is updated regularly with records of new specimens accessioned at the NYBG Herbarium and with any changes to records already in the Catalogue.
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