About IPNI

The International Plant Names Index (IPNI) is a database of the names and associated basic bibliographical details of seed plants, ferns and fern allies. Its goal is to eliminate the need for repeated reference to primary sources for basic bibliographic information about plant names. The data are freely available and are gradually being standardized and checked. IPNI will be a dynamic resource, depending on direct contributions by all members of the botanical community.

IPNI is the product of a collaboration between The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, The Harvard University Herbaria, and the Australian National Herbarium

NEWS

• Explore links to nomenclatural information, sources of current names and digitized botanical literature.

• Generic names in current use have been assigned to the appropriate Brummitt family (see Understanding the data). Standardization of the remaining generic names continues.

• In 2007 the IPNI database was searched over 20,000 times per day on average.

• IPNI home page to be updated regularly. Check here for new information and tips.

• See statistics for numbers and categories of names being added to IPNI.

• Data improvement continues. We are standardizing authors and publication titles in plant name records, converting roman numerals to Arabic, adding publication dates where missing and correcting specific and infraspecific epithets in line with the current ICBN.

• Errors found and corrected in the standardization process are displayed in a table, last updated 1 May 2008. If you would like a copy of this data in delimited format please let us know.

TIPS

May 08

• Use a wildcard at the end of publication title searches as some titles can be extremely long!

• Selecting "Full records" as the Output Format can be useful when comparing similar records.

• In records of new combinations, the author of the basionym doesn't appear in parentheses before the author of the new combination in names published in IK before 1931.

April 08

• Quick searches allow you to paste a plant name (without authors) straight into a single box. Unlike full searches, quick searches are case-sensitive and will find matching records at the same rank as the name you put in. Try it out! Get more ideas on how to use it.

Many infraspecific names are missing from IPNI because the IK compilers didn't start recording them until 1971. There is no need for you to report these omissions, but if you come across a missing post-1970 infraspecific name, please let us know.

• If you find IPNI useful for your work, please mention it when citing sources of information. It may be cited as 'The International Plant Names Index (2008). Published on the Internet http://www.ipni.org [accessed 1 March 2008]*. *[Replace this date with the appropriate date for your use of the database]

March 08

• A hyperlink on author or publication title in the detailed search results indicates standardized format.

• Want to see new names added since last year, last month, last week or yesterday? You can do this by searching by additional terms. Search must be limited by at least one term, like family. Find out more.

• Remember IPNI's focus is purely nomenclatural. No opinions are given on what are currently accepted names or synonyms. [See link to find some sources of current names.]

Page last updated 29 April 2008