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The San Diego County Plant Atlas project began in 2003. At that time the herbarium at the SDNHM held about 150,000 specimens, approximately half of which had been entered into the Herbarium Database. These older specimens date back to the 1870s and are from across North America, but the focus of collection for the previous half-century has been the southwestern US and northern Mexico, especially Baja California. We continue to add specimens to the herbarium, and to the herbarium database, from our entire region of interest. However, the growth of the herbarium took a leap with the inception of the Plant Atlas. As of mid-2006 the size of the herbarium is approaching 170,000, and is growing at a rate of about 8000 specimens per year.
Included in the herbarium collection are the San Diego County and Baja California synoptic collections. Searches of these two synoptic collections, with images of the specimen sheets, are web-accessible. The Baja collection can be found at BajaFlora.org. The San Diego collection can be found at this web site after log-in with parabotanist credentials. A separate database, the Plant Atlas Database, was developed to handle the incoming data from the Parabotanists. Partly this was to facilitate the web-based interactive features of the project, partly because some different fields were needed, such as preliminary identification by the collector, and partly to allow the data to be available for searching and mapping as soon the specimens were collected — without the delays of waiting for the specimens to be brought to the museum, labels printed, identifications checked, and plants mounted and accessioned into the collection, which might take a year or more. The Plant Atlas database tracks the Parabotanists' specimens as they go through processing: first marked when the label is printed, then marked as "Verified" when the identification has been verified or corrected by Jon Rebman or some other expert, then having the accession number added when the plant is mounted. At that point the specimen is filed into the herbarium and its record is copied into the main herbarium database. Ultimately, all the Plant Atlas records will have been integrated into the main Herbarium database, and the Plant Atlas database will then be deleted. There are significant differences between the two databases. The Plant Atlas database has far superior data, with carefully checked identifications and precise localities. The plant names have all been updated to the latest botanical nomenclature, as established in the 4th edition of the Checklist of the Vascular Plants of San Diego County. An IMLS grant has been received to bring the data for the older specimens up to a standard that will allow those records to be integrated with the Plant Atlas records. The San Diego County records from the undatabased portion of the herbarium are being entered into the database, and the localities of all San Diego records are being examined and georeferenced. Unfortunately, the locality information on many of the older specimens is so vague that they cannot be placed with any precision. Name changes and corrections of identifications for the older specimens will be done as they become necessary, but these tasks are enormously labor-intensive, so this will be an ongoing process. Unfortunately this will complicate searching the database, as older specimens may be listed under old names and Plant Atlas specimens under new names. A search of the Herbarium database alone will produce records from the San Diego County collection, but will not include those from the Plant Atlas project. The number in the Index column is the SDNHM Accession Number. The locality data provided in this search is limited to the Atlas Square, which, for the Herbarium specimens, was calculated from the latitude and longitude if available. A map of the Atlas Squares can be found in the drop-down menus of the Plant Atlas home page. A capability of mapping specimens from both databases can also be found on that web page. |