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BOTANICAL HOLDINGS FROM CHIAPAS, MEXICO

Search the Chiapas Holdings

The Herbarium of the California Academy of Sciences has started a project to computerize the herbarium label data for its holding from Chiapas, Mexico. This will include all the Chiapas collections in Herbarium of the California Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Dudley Herbarium of Stanford University (DS).

We estimate that we currently house in excess of 70,000 specimens from Chiapas which makes these holdings one of the definitive collections of the vascular plants of Chiapas. This collection was built primarily by Dr. Dennis Breedlove during his thirty years of work on the Flora of Chiapas. Although most of the collections were made by Dr. Breedlove, the collection includes extensive series of most of the other major collectors in the State.

Microsoft Access 2000 is being used to capture label data. A copy of these data are prejoined and exported to MS-SQL Server 7.0 as a single table, which can then be queried via Web forms. The Web-accessible database is updated periodically.

The Web-accessible database contains and displays the following fields:

Displayed Name:  displayed value composed from
	DB Field	Datatype
AccNum: Herbarium_Code + AccessionNumber
	Herbarium Code	Varchar(3) {values: "Cas"|"DS"}
	Accession_Number	Int
Family:
	Family	Varchar(20)
Taxon-Auth: Genus + Species + Sp_Auth + Insp_Rank + Insp_Epith + Insp_Auth
	Genus	Varchar(30)
	Species	Varchar (30)
	Sp_Auth	Varchar (60)
	Insp_Rank	Varchar (6)
	Insp_Epith	Varchar (30)
	Insp_Auth	Varchar (50)
Collector: Collector + Collection_No
	Collector	Varchar (160) [only primary collector listed]
	Collection_No	Varchar (10) [may contain alpha prefix and/or suffix]
Date: [DD Mon YYYY] + " - " + [DD Mon YYYY]
	Day_Beginning	Smallint
	Month_Beginning	Smallint [displayed as three-letter month abbrev.]
	Year_Beginning	Smallint
	Day_Ending	Smallint
	Month_Ending	Smallint [displayed as three-letter month abbrev.]
	Year_Ending	Smallint
Municipio:
	Municipio	Varchar (50)
Locality:
	Locality	Varchar (255)
Elevation: Elevation + " - " + Elevation_Max + Elev_Units
	Elevation	Smallint
	Elevation_Max	Smallint
	Elev_Units	Varchar (2) {values: "ft" | "m"}
Habitat:
	Habitat	Varchar (200)

Controlled Vocabulary

The values of Taxon-Auth, Collector, and Municipio are controlled by related tables in the original Access database.

Taxonomic names were first entered from D. E. Breedlove, Listodos Florísticos de México IV. Flora de Chiapas. 1-246. 1986. Records were added to accommodate specimens where the family, genus, or species is unknown. New names are also being added as we encounter taxa in the herbarium that were not listed in Breedlove 1986. There are currently 10,249 records in this table.

Taxon-Auth

Tax_Number (Primary key)

Family (Family)

Genus (Genus)

Species (Species)

Sp_Auth (Species author)

Insp (Variety or subspecies)

Insp_Epith (Infraspecific epithet)

Insp_Auth (Infraspecific author)

The Collector table includes those collectors who are known to have made plant collections in Chiapas. Additional names are added as necessary. Currently there are 322 collector's names in this table.

Collector

Name_Number (Primary key)

Last_Name (Family name(s))

First_Name (First given name)

Middle_Name (Second given name)

The Municipio table includes the 112 municipios of Chiapas.

Municipio

Municipio_Number (Primary key)

Municipio (Municipio name)