The Small British Herbaria Project

Home page

The Small British Herbaria Project (SBHP) is a joint venture between the BSBI and the University of Hull, Department of Geography. It aims to bring together information about specimens of British plants held in various collections and make it available from a single internet source. Kent and Allen’s “British and Irish Herbaria” (1984) already provides a comprehensive insight into the extent and location of collections but no information about individual specimens. At the present this information is, with some notable exceptions, only very sparingly available.

The SBHP provides a general indexing service to herbaria, some of which may have their own comprehensive on-line resources but for others it could represent the sole catalogue. The searching service is freely available to all and the catalogue hosting is available, again free of charge, to anyone willing to provide suitable data sets. Although the kind of information stored for each specimen needs to be standardised, users are free to provide as much or as little information as they wish.

NEWS 2010 - Dr Eric Chicken's herbarium

In 2008 Dr Eric Chicken donated his personal collection to the University of Hull herbarium. About half of the British material has now been catalogued.

New data set added November 2006

BRISTMro : this is a complete data set for the Ida Roper (1865-1935) mosses and liverworts collection (Ba3934), which forms part of the herbarium holdings at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery.

New data set added June 2006

Leander Wolstenholme has provided a provisional catalogue of the Red Data species in the Manchester Museums Herbarium (MANC). Leander would particularly welcome feedback on this data set.

New data sets added January 2006

Sam Trebilcock has made available data for specimens held by the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery.

BRISTMbi : the Stephen Henry Bishop herbarium of vascular plants.
BRISTMsa : The Sandwith collection, rich in aliens.
BRISTMtu : the Gladys Tuck British herbarium of vascular plants.
BRISTMwh : the K.E. White Bryophyte and Lichen Collection.

New data sets added June 2005

BON : An index to about half of the vascular plants in the Bolton Museum Herbarium.

Gardam : A collection of plants made by the late Miss P A Gardam of the Hull Natural History Society. The majority were collected in v.c.61 between 1952 and 1961. The specimens are now housed in the Hull University Herbarium.

New data set added May 2005

A catalogue of the W.P. Hamilton collection of bryophytes from Shrewsbury Museum. The data set has been made available by Peter Boyd, the curator. Images of these specimens may be seen on Shrewsbury Museum's Darwin Country website.