Vascular plant collection

Data Records

The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 4,791 records.

1 extension data tables also exist. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated below.

This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.

Versions

The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.

How to cite

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

Herbarium of the National Museum of Natural History, BAS (2025). Vascular plant collection. Version 1.48. National Museum of Natural History, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Occurrence dataset. https://cloud.gbif.org/eca/resource?r=nmnhs_botany_collection&v=1.48

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is National Museum of Natural History, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC 4.0) License.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 663e0ec0-7243-48bc-a0dd-55d1ed2224e7.  National Museum of Natural History, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by GBIF Bulgaria.

Keywords

Metadata; Specimen; vascular plant; herbarium; Bulgaria

Contacts

Geographic Coverage

Bulgaria, the Balkan peninsula

Taxonomic Coverage

Vascular plants

Project Data

The Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) is a new world-class Research Infrastructure (RI) for natural science collections. The DiSSCo RI works for the digital unification of all European natural science assets under common curation and access policies and practices. These aim to make the data easily Findable, more Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR). As such, DiSSCo enables the transformation of a fragmented landscape of the crucial natural science collections into an integrated knowledge base that provides interconnected hard evidence on the natural world. DiSSCo represents the largest ever formal agreement between natural history museums, botanical gardens and collection-holding universities in the world. Mission Our mission is to bring up the major Bulgarian biodiversity collections into the Digital Era. As a part of the pan-European DiSSCo RI, we adhere at its mission, which is entirely valid for the present project. It is “to mobilise, unify and deliver biodiversity information at the scale, form and precision required by scientific communities; transforming a fragmented landscape into a coherent and responsive research infrastructure.” Taking into account the specificities of the conceptual and technological level of our collections, we formulate the following mission of DiSSCo- BG: to bring up the major Bulgarian biodiversity collections into the Digital Era. General objective Upgrade the technological, digital and human capacity level of the major biodiversity and geodiversity collections in Bulgaria maintained by IBER-BAS and NMNHS-BAS in order to increase the capacity of collections and collection-based research to meet the needs of the society of modern biodiversity science in line with the existing international standards and to support the efficient Bulgarian participation in the development of the pan-European RI DiSSCo.

The personnel involved in the project:

Sampling Methods

Most specimens were collected during floristic field studies of the corresponding collectors. Some floristic studies, e.g. those of [prof. Dimitar Dimitrov](https://www.nmnhs.com/dimitrov-dimitar-en.html), were done as part of the tasks associated with Environmental Impact Assessments. Some specimens were collected for identification vegetation surveys using phytosociological plots (relevés). Such are plots are coded as AAYY## (where AA stands for the abbreviation of the author, YY is the year of sampling, and ## is the successive plot number) and size is 16 to 100 sq.m. For example, SP1801 stands for the first plots sampled in 2018 by Salza Palpurina. Some specimens come from a [project for sampling kurgans (burial mounds) in Bulgaria](http://www.iber.bas.bg/?q=en/node/701), which has used nested sampling. In such cases, the code is as follows: kurgan_[ID]_[exposition: N, E, S, W]_[size:1, 25], or kurgan_ID_all, which means that the plan was surveyed out of the nested plots.

Method step description:

1. Specimens received their first-ever catalogue number upon entering the information on their labels into the database, as the collection had not been catalogued prior to digitization. For the vascular plant collection, we adhere to a standardized format: BG-NMNHS-BOT-############. Some specimens received an additional alternative catalogue number which contains the same number but in a different format: BNHM-############ to match numbers in the corresponding publication.
2. The information found on the labels, such as taxon name, locality, date of collection, and the names of collectors and determiners, was transcribed and translated into English before being entered into the database. Names of localities were transliterated using the Bulgarian Law for Transliteration. Names of administrative regions follow the EKATTEs.
3. For the transcription of labels, we used two successive approaches: (1) In 2023, specimens were first imaged using mobile phone cameras (initial low-quality images), then information from the images was transcribed and entered, and the initial low-quality images were temporarily linked to their corresponding database records for quality assurance purposes and for matching the newly printed labels. (2) Since Jan 2024, we have adopted the following approach: first, creating a new record in the database to obtain a unique catalogue number, then writing this catalogue number on the specimen's voucher, and finally, transcribing information directly from the specimen into the database.
4. The transcribed information, along with the assigned catalogue number, was subsequently used to generate new labels. If the specimen was revised in the meantime, the label would reflect the updated determination. Then labels are printed and mounted, and the voucher is imaged with all attributes (printed labels, color checker and a scale).
5. Localities without GPS coordinates (mostly from before 2014) were georeferenced post hoc, typically using point locations with associated uncertainty reported in meters (dwc:coordinateUncertaintyInMeters). Georeferencing was done on an as-needed basis or when locality information was readily available, using sources such as BG Mountains online map (https://kade.si/) for most localities in Bulgaria—which includes historical map layers dating back to the 1930s with old Turkish toponyms—as well as mapy.cz and Google Earth for localities outside Bulgaria.

Collection Data

Additional Metadata