IPNI – International Plant Names Index

IPNI - International Plant Names Index is an international searchable database of plant names.

Description

The International Plant Names Index (IPNI) is a database of the names and associated basic bibliographical details of all 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.1

IPNI also acts as an LSID server, allowing the resolution of specially formatted IPNI LSIDs automatically into RDF format metadata. 2

IPNI is the product of a collaboration between The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, The Harvard University Herbaria, and the Australian National Herbarium.3

Function

• Taxonomy
• Identification tools, keys
• User interface
• Personal and institutional use
• Raw data or visual presentation

Why use this tool?

• For an authoritative compilation of plant names

Who will use this tool?

• Data creation
• Experts - taxonomy
• Data capture
• Curators
• Data providers
• Institutions
• Private collections
• Data users
• Expert
• Interest groups
• General public

How will the tool be used?

IPNI data can be downloaded in a number of different delimited data formats, as well as the normal and full record html formats. The normal format gives you the classic IPNI listing, 100 records per page. The full record format gives you a listing but with the full details displayed for each record.4

• Online database
• Web access
• User input required

Where in the data chain could this tool be used?

• Data source
• User’s machine

When could this tool be used?

• Before data is made available to ALA
• At the time of a user request
• As a post process, after data is with the user

Availability

• IPNI: http://www.ipni.org/
• Linking to IPNI: http://www.ipni.org/link_to_ipni.html
• Data formats: http://www.ipni.org/ipni/delimited_help.html
• Free for personal or use within an organisation
• Copyright Plant Names Project 5
• Restrictions: Max download 5000 records

Comments

• Search can be slow
• Scientific names. No common names
• Lacks information on many species