Electronic Data Processing of Herbarium Specimens Data for the Flora of Veracruz Program

Summary

The Flora of Veracruz program is a comprehensive study of the plant resources of this Mexican state. It involves a series of studies that go beyond the common objectives of the classical floras as it includes ecological and environmental studies and it is utilizing electronic data processing methods for the entire project.

The main objective is the production of a Flora of the same type as an ordinary good modern one. At the same time it could serve as a basis to create a data bank on the plants and the environments of Veracruz which could have many uses throughout the time of preparation of the Flora and afterwards.

A brief discussion of the kinds of data that are being introduced in the data bank will be explained here. We will present a more ample discussion of the data from herbarium specimens.

Even though most of the effort has been concentrated on new collections, we have made a survey of the collections already present in the herbaria of several institutions. As an example of this effort we will present the pilot project that has been accomplished to compile the data from Veracruz specimens from the herbarium of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. We will show examples of the kind of processing that we are doing with them.

A comparison of the collections of two families (Piperaceae & Araliaceae) in selected European herbaria will be presented as another example of the kinds and numbers of Veracruz collections housed in these herbaria.

A discussion on the future of herbarium data processing in future botanical research will be presented in the context of our floristic research programme.

Flora of Veracruz, contribution number 15. A joint project of the Institute of Biology of the National University of Mexico and the Department of Botany of the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, U. S. A. to prepare an ecological and floristic study of the state of Veracruz, Mexico.