About "The Vascular Plant Collection at the Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Karlsruhe"

The vascular plant collection at the Herbarium Karlsruhe (officially KR) contains collections from all over the world, including thousands of specimens from C.C. Gmelin, the first director of the collections, from the years 1779-1835, although since the post-war period a focus of the collections has been southwest Germany. The results are reflected in the basic work "The flowering plants of Baden-Württemberg", a cooperation with the Stuttgart Museum.

While the herbarium has always served as a collection of evidence for our region, the collections are much more extensive and reflect the global commitment of the SMNK. The vascular plant herbarium currently contains around 300.000 specimens.

For decades there was no dedicated curator at the SMNK for the vascular plant collection. Since 2022 Prof. Dr. Rainer W. Bussmann responsible for this area.

Data Project and Service

The Vascular Plant Collection of the SMNK is made available through Diversity Workbench.

So far about 100.000 specimens have been digitized. The scientific names of newer accessions follow The World Flora Online. However, because there is no automatic adjustment to nomenclature in the database, specimens of the same species might be listed under different names, depending on when these specimens where processed. Thus, the vouchers on which the data are based are of different taxonomic and nomenclatural levels of processing. Sometimes specimens, especially from the 18th and 19th century, have not yet been revised. Only recent collections were so far georeferenced, while georeferencing of older data is in progress, and only georeferenced vouchers are shown on the maps.

The collection and the datasets are maintained and expanded by the curator of vascular plants, bryophytes and lichens Prof. Dr. Rainer Bussmann; data are organized by Dr. Florian Raub. Notices of errors of any kind are much appreciated by the editorial staff.

The Database "The Vascular Plant Collection at the Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Karlsruhe" and – if not stated otherwise – its supporting files have been copyrighted © 2012–2024 by the Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Karlsruhe.