Indian Virtual Herbarium

The Herbarium is a collection of dried plant specimens that are stored, catalogued, and arranged by family, genus and species for study.

Indian Virtual Herbarium, the biggest virtual database of flora in the country has details about one lakh plant specimens

Developed by scientists of the Botanical Survey of India (BSI), Indian Virtual Herbarium was inaugurated by Union Minister of Environment Forest and Climate Change on July 1, 2022 in Kolkata

Each record in the digital herbarium includes an image of the preserved plant specimen, scientific name, collection locality, and collection date, collector name, and barcode number.

The digital herbarium also includes features to extract the data State-wise and users can search plants of their own States which will help them to identify regional plants and in building regional checklists.

The herbarium provides information on plants in different categories such as Cryptogams (spore bearing plants). Phanerogams (seed bearing plants).

Both the groups are again divided into two categories which includes genera; specimen and type specimens.

Scientists say that there are approximately three million plant specimens in the country which are with different herbaria that are located at zonal centers of BSI and at the Central National Herbarium located at Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden at Howrah in West Bengal.