The herbarium is a storehouse of mounted specimens arranged according to a known system of classification. KFRI herbarium was started in early 1980s with regular field collections of specimens. Now it holds over 10306 specimens and recognized internationally by the acronym KFRI by the International Association of Plant Taxonomists (IAPT). Apart from general collections, KFRI-herbarium has a complete collection of medicinal plants in South India and a pan Indian collection of palms and bamboos of India including Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The species in the herbaria are indexed in alphabetical order with collection numbers under respective plant families. The families are arranged according to the system of classification of flowering plants by Benthem and Hooker with delimitation to certain families in accordance with their current concepts. The 10306 specimens representing more than 2040 species from 203 families. The predominant plant families in the collection are Poaceae (171 spp.), Orchidaceae (151 spp.), Arecaceae (109 spp.), Fabaceae (81 spp.), Euphorbiaceae (96 spp.), Rubiaceae (90 spp.) and Compositae (14 spp.). The herbarium also represented with 90 species of pteridophytes.

The Project

KFRI RP 574/09

"Computerization of KFRI Herbarium- Phase II"

Investigators: Dr. C. Renuka; Dr. Sreekumar, V.B; Mr. K. H. Hussain
Duration:3 years (June 2009-Aug 2012)
Funding Source: Plan Fund

Zooming the Image

Query Building and Search

The Query can be built related to ALL Fields or to individual fields

1. Family
2. Genus / Species
3. Locality
4. Habit / Habitat
5. Local Name
6. Altitude
7. Collector

Search shows all hits with a two-line description.

Clicking individual hit reveals

1. Full description of the specimen
2. Thumbnails of herbarium sheets
3. Bigger image of thumbnail in ‘fit page’

Search on Multi Parameters

ALL field search is default. Multi parameters can be given seperated with space, as in Google, to form query like "River side Herb Yellow Flower".

Which retrieves a unique record of species Acroterma arnottianum

This kind of multi-level search is not attempted in any herbarium in the web.

Search in Malayalam

The information system is Unicode compliant. Local names of species and the locations are described in English as well as in Malayalam.