GrassBase - The Online World Grass Flora

Welcome to GrassBase!

What is GrassBase?

GrassBase will ultimately provide an integrated, online view of the World Grass Species databases which have historically been held in two separate downloadable databases. The first step towards this integration has been the generation of nearly 11,000 species descriptons from the DELTA format that they're encoded in. In addition to this the synonymy/nomenclature database now contains links to these species descriptions integrated with searches for the accepted name and synonyms for just over 60,000 grass names.

Further details of recent developments can be found on our News page which we will use to keep you informed of changes and updates in GrassBase.

Descriptions

This section of the database contains descriptions of species and genera derived from a DELTA database. The species descriptions are all individually coded from reliable sources such as Floristic accounts where possible and supplemented by original descriptions and consultation of specimens where necessary. These species description pages include links that allow you to search a number of other online databases including the Herbarium Catalogue, the electronic Plant Information Centre, GBIF, Tropicos and Google.

Synonymy

The nomenclature portion of the database is currently held within a downloadable Microsoft Access database. This database can produce regional and country checklists, find the accepted name and synonyms for over 60,000 grass names. Each of the accepted names is linked to it's species description page. Additional information that is available include original citations and type locality data. You can download the database from the Synonymy pages.

Software

In addition to the data that we have available through the textual descriptions, nomenclature database and interactive key, we have developed a number of simple software tools that help make our jobs easier and users are invited to download and use this software for their own purposes. You can read more and download these programs on the software page.