NZVH Public Help Page

Introduction
The New Zealand Virtual Herbarium (NZVH) website enables a single query to access specimen records from 11 participating members of the New Zealand National Herbarium Network. The data are derived from the information associated with specimens at each of the herbaria which have been collected for scientific research, particularly systematics. It is therefore important to note that the data represent the state of specimens in the herbaria, some or many of which may not yet have been updated; furthermore, the herbaria do not all identify their collections according the same botanical treatments.

The data are also retrieved and displayed as they are provided by each herbarium, including uncertainties, data errors and difference in data entry standards. Thus the patterns of the NZVH are indicative rather than absolute, and may not be suitable for applications that require a high level of precision.

General
Search terms are case insensitive. 'Raoulia' and 'raoulia' will return the same records.

The wildcard is '%'. 'alb%' will return 'alba', 'albosericea', 'albida', 'albovirens', 'albicans' etc. The wildcard can be placed either side of the search term, or both, to make the desired pattern. However, a wild card at the start of the query value will significantly slow slow down a search.

Navigating the query form
The query form works best with Javascript enabled, but will also work without. The following assumes that Javascript is enabled.

The query form has an expandable form for querying taxon names. Typing a genus name in the taxon name query will bring up a plus-sign button. Clicking on the button or hitting  when it is in focus will add a new row. Up to five taxon names can be entered.

Taxon name
You can query using scientific names by entering query values into one or all of the genus, species and infraspecific name fields for a single query row. Queries of up to five taxon names at a time are possible by adding additional rows.

It is important to note that different herbaria may not follow the same system of classification, so you may need to query on a synonym in order to retrieve matches from all herbaria.

The following resources provide authoritative information on plant names and synonomy:
 * New Zealand Plant Names Database
 * New Zealand Fungi
 * New Zealand Organisms Register (Currently under development)
 * International Plant Name Index (IPNI)
 * Australian Plant Name Index (APNI)
 * Index Fungorum
 * Algaebase
 * Australian Marine Algal Name Index (AMANI)

Qualifiers
If there is any doubt about the identification of a plant, the record may contain one of the following qualifiers:
 * aff. = akin to or bordering
 * cf. = compare with
 * forsan = perhaps
 * near = close to
 * ? = questionable
 * incorrect = incorrect (this is used where the name applied to the specimen is known to be incorrect, but a new positive identification has not yet been made)

To include uncertain identification select 'yes' from the drop down menu under Include Uncertain Identifications.

Output
Three types of output are available: html, csv and maps.

When interpreting these data please note that there are difference between herbaria in the data provided and the data entry standards that are used.

The fields provided in html and csv formats are: Family, Genus, species, infraspecific rank, infraspecific name, Scientific Name, Identification Qualifier, Herbarium Source, Record Suffix (Accession number), Latitude, Longitude, Nearest named place, State, Country, Collection Date, Collector, Collecting number, Additional collectors, Geocode Precision, Coordinate Error Method, Date Last Edited.

HTML table
This output type returns a table with 10, 25, 50 or 100 records per page. The rows within the table can be sorted by clicking on sort indicators beside the column names. To sort by more than one column, hold the shift key while click on the indicators.

CSV
This output type will create a comma delimited text file that can be opened with most text/document editor or spreasheets. to try and reduce the size of the file it will be provided in a zipped format, and can be saved or opened directly.

Map
Maps will provide an overview of a taxons distribution. However, the maps are based solely upon specimen records that have georeference data available, and will not provide access to all the specimen data available from the herbaria. To query for these data select the html or csv output type.

Points on