GrassBase - The Online World Grass Flora

W.D. Clayton, M.S. Vorontsova, K.T. Harman & H. Williamson

© Copyright The Board of Trustees, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

20th January 2016

The 2016 release of Grassbase includes all new grass names recorded by the International Plant Names Index up to 11 November 2015. Grassbase now includes 11,369 accepted species, and 64,213 published names at species rank or below.

06th March 2014

The March 2014 release of Grassbase includes all new grass names recorded by the International Plant Names Index up to 24 October 2013. Grassbase now includes 11,313 accepted species, 713 genera, and 64,223 published names at species rank or below.

16th November 2012

The November 2012 release of Grassbase includes all new grass names recorded by the International Plant Names Index up to 26 July 2012. Grassbase now includes 11,290 accepted species, 707 genera, and 63,922 published names at species rank or below.

19th April 2012

The April 2012 release of Grassbase includes all new grass names recorded by the International Plant Names Index up to 29 September 2011. Grassbase now includes 11,259 accepted species, 705 genera, and 63,560 published names at species rank or below.

20th February 2011

Significant quantities of data has been added to GrassBase during the last two years. The current release includes full text descriptions of 709 genera, full text descriptions of 11,369 species, and the treatment of 62,678 published names within the downloadable synonymy module.

28th January 2008

We have just updated GrassBase again. There are now 62,047 names at species level and below within the nomenclature database and 11,089 accepted species with accompanying descriptions. There are also 703 generic descriptions produced using intkey and the gesumm.bat utility found within the test section of the DELTA website. Changes within the databases are as follows:

Nomenclature/Synonymy
  • Taxonomic information now included for all grass Genera!!! There are a total of 1,955 generic names with information on them including synonyms, types are place of publication.
  • Flora of North America grasses volumes included
  • Most new names for 2006-2007 that have been indexed by IPNI have been included - we are working through the rest
Descriptions
  • New descriptions added
  • External links updated - we now link to an updated GBIF overview page for all our accepted species

8th June 2007

GrassBase has been updated! There are now 61,141 names within the nomenclature database and 11,086 accepted species with accompanying descriptions. There are also 703 generic descriptions produced using intkey and the gesumm.bat utility found within the test section of the DELTA website. Changes within the databases are as follows:

Descriptions
  • New descriptions added
  • External links updated
Nomenclature/Synonymy
  • New names incorporated - this includes updates found in Flora of China and the Catalogue of New World Grasses, with ongoing work on the new Flora of North America volume.
  • Geography complete to TDWG Level 3 (Botanical Country)
  • Possible origin of unknown names (Lists>Unknown Names)
  • Lists all names associated with a genus (Lists>Genera>All)
Software

GrassUtils has become DeltaUtils - this now only contains the features which external users would find useful

CultCode has been updated to the 2004 code for cultivated plants.

8th November 2006

Database Update

The World Grass Species database has been updated with a number of very important changes. With this new name we hope to become a central resource for Agrostologists worldwide.
New Name
The database has been christened GrassBase following the trend of a number of other web projects.
New Descriptions
Just over 150 new descriptions have been incorporated into the database, including their associated nomenclature (which can be found in the updated synonymy database). This brings our total number of species with descriptions to 10,982. If you feel we are missing any data please don't hesitate to inform us. If you have an earlier version of the nomenclature database please download it again as the links will be out of date.
New Search Page

We have finally updated our search page and it is now much faster. In addition you can add GrassBase to your personal Google Homepage to quickly search our data.

Generic Descriptions
We have successfully generated descriptions for all grass genera from our species descriptions using Delta's built in abilities to summarise individual taxon descriptions.
New Search Page
We have finally updated the search page and this runs a lot faster. You can view a sample query for Festuca here.
New Links
Each description page (species and genera) has been enhanced with the provisions of links that will search a number of different internet resources, including searching for specimens on Kew's Herbarium Catalogue and electronic Plant Information Centre or ePIC. Many of the specimens within the Herbarium Catalogue are type specimens and have been scanned at high resolution which will help with your identification process. Additional links are also provided to GBIF (the Global Biodiversity Information Facility) , w3 TROPICOS and Google. These links will help to streamline your data gathering process, giving you more time to focus on what's important to you.
This Page
We will keep you informed of any additional changes to the database through this news page, so for the latest information check it out regularly.