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PBI Solanum Project

The Planetary Biodiversity Inventories (PBI) Solanum project is funded by the US National Science Foundation for five years to produce a worldwide taxonomic monograph of the species of Solanum. It is a collaboration between The Department of Biology, University of Utah; The Natural History Museum, London; The New York Botanical Garden, New York and the USDA, Agricultural Research Service, Madison, Wisconsin, as well as a number of Solanaceae specialists worldwide. The project will produce a robust phylogenetic framework.

According to the main project website, the primary goal is the creation of a web-accessible relational database mirrored in the USA and the UK that supports five modules:

new and archival information on species names and descriptions with supporting vouchers and literature;
interactive identification keys with pictorial glossary of plant parts;
digital images of plants and habitats and associated pollinators and herbivores where known;
a specimen database of herbarium vouchers and geo-referenced collections;
molecular sequence and phylogenetic information, linked to Genbank and other resources in the plant genomics field.

The New York Botanical Garden is cataloging all Solanum specimens in the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium for this project. As of October, 2005, approximately 16,000 records have been created for this project, and new specimens records are added daily. Representative specimens of each species will be digitally imaged as part of the project.

To search the PBI Solanum Project Catalog by the name of the plant (family, genus, species, or subspecific epithet), author, collector, collector number, barcode number, or type status, use the Quick Search box below. To search one or more specific fields in the database, choose the Detailed Search.

Basic Search

Advanced Search

Family (most recent determination)
Scientific Name (most recent determination)		Searches the genus, species, infraspecies, and author abbreviations of a name.
Genus (most recent determination)
Species (most recent determination)
Subspecies/Variety/Form (most recent determination)
Family (all determinations)
Scientific Name (all determinations)		Searches the genus, species, infraspecies, and author abbreviations of a name.
Genus (all determinations)
Species (all determinations)
Subspecies/Variety/Form (all determinations)
Common Name
Determiner		Searches initials and last name.
Collector		Searches initials and last name.
Collection Number
Collection Date (dd mm yyyy)		One or more may be used to search the collection date.
Continent		Examples: Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Central America, Europe, North America, Oceania, South America, West Indies
Country		Avoid abbreviations. Examples: Netherlands Antilles; Papua New Guinea; Philippines; United States of America
State/Province		Avoid abbreviations. Examples: Mato Grosso do Sul; Nevada; Santa Catarina
County/Municipality
City
Precise Location
Habitat
Plant Description
Substrate
Barcode		Unique NY-assigned specimen barcode number
Type Status		"Holotype," "Isotype," etc.
Records with Images		Limits searches to only those records with images or other multimedia attachments.
Records Per Page

Search Tips

Searches in the Virtual Herbarium are by default word-based. The fastest searches are made by using whole words as the criteria. Wildcard characters can be used to find partial words, but search times will be significantly longer.

Use an asterisk (*) as a substitute for any number of characters in a word. (Example: "South*" in the Province/State field will return specimen records from "New South Wales," "South Carolina," etc.)

Use an exclamation mark before a word to specifically exclude that word from the search. (Example: "Solanum" in the Genus field and "!confertiseriatum" in the Species field will return all records of Solanum except Solanum confertiseriatum.)

Use quotation marks to search for exact phrases. Words not enclosed by quotation marks will be used to return records with all of the words, but not necessarily in the order typed.

*The Scientific Name field searches the genus, species, infraspecies, and author abbreviations of a name.
For example: the term "Bitter" finds specimen records of numerous taxa described by Friedrich Bitter.

Author abbreviations can be found using Harvard University Herbaria's Index of Botanists.