Corresponding author: Francisco Márquez-García ( francisco.marquezga@juntaex.es ) Academic editor: Manuel Luján
© 2021 Francisco Márquez-García, David García-Alonso, María Josefa Guerra-Barrena, Francisco María Vázquez-Pardo.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC0 Public Domain Dedication.
Citation:
Márquez-García F, García-Alonso D, Guerra-Barrena MJ, Vázquez-Pardo FM (2021) Vascular plants dataset of the herbarium (HSS) of Agrarian Research Institute Finca “La Orden-Valdesequera” (CICYTEX), Extremadura, Spain. PhytoKeys 171: 47-59. https://doi.org/10.3897/phytokeys.171.58900
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The HSS herbarium database includes 69,397 records of vascular plant taxa, representing 91.1% of the herbarium’s specimens as for December, 2019, which are available through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) website (accessible at https://doi.org/10.15468/siye1z). The database represents 4,343 species and 787 infraspecific taxa (530 subspecies, 130 varieties and 127 notho-species or hybrids) of 196 families and 1,164 genera, and 105 type sheets. So far, 97.7% of the databased records are georeferenced (geographic coordinates or MRGS coordinates) and the geographic area with the largest number of specimens is the southwest quadrant of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal).
Herbarium collection, HSS, Portugal, Southwest Iberian Peninsula, Spain, vascular plants
Forest biodiversity research (
The HSS herbarium has five collections: fungi (HSS-F, 447 specimens), seeds (HSS-C, 727 entries), pollen (HSS-P, 402 entries), wood (HSS-X, 89 entries), and vascular plants (HSS, 76,136 specimens). Of the 76,136 total specimens, 91.1% (69,397 specimens) of the general vascular plant collection database is accessible on the GBIF platform (https://doi.org/10.15468/siye1z).
The vascular plant collection of the HSS herbarium is the result of research carried out over the last 25 years by the Department of Forest Production and Biodiversity. This research included studies on plant diversity (
The main aim of this paper is to provide a vision about the specimens conserved in the HSS herbarium (diversity, distribution and types), and its potential uses in taxonomical, chorological and ecological studies.
The HSS herbarium collection database contains 69,397 records belonging to 196 families, 1,164 genera, 4,343 species and 787 infraspecific taxa (530 subspecies, 130 varieties, and 127 notho-species or hybrids). Of the specimens in the collection 98.5% are identified at species level.
97.4% of the specimens housed in the HSS herbarium database are angiosperms (Magnoliophyta Cronquist, Takht. & Zimmerm. ex Reveal) with thirteen groups/clade based in
Clade | Subclass | Specimens number | % value | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Ferns | Ferns | Equisetidae | 73 | 0.1 | ||||
Ophioglossidae | 23 | 0.03 | ||||||
Polypodiidae | 1,168 | 1.7 | ||||||
Lycophytes | Lycopodiidae | 148 | 0.2 | |||||
Gymnosperms | Ginkgoidae | 1 | 0 | |||||
Gnetidae | 12 | 0.02 | ||||||
Pinidade | 415 | 0.6 | ||||||
Angiosperms | Basal angiosperms | 37 | 0.05 | |||||
Mesangiospermae | Magnoliids | 280 | 0.4 | |||||
Monocots | 16,994 | 24.5 | ||||||
Eudicots | 1,767 | 2.6 | ||||||
Superasterids | 4,159 | 6.0 | ||||||
Asterids | 946 | 1.4 | ||||||
Campanulids | 10,021 | 14.4 | ||||||
Lamiids | 10,169 | 14.6 | ||||||
Superrosids | 706 | 1.0 | ||||||
Rosids | 737 | 1.1 | ||||||
Fabids | 15,984 | 23.0 | ||||||
Malvids | 5,753 | 8.3 | ||||||
Probable sister of Eudicots | 4 | 0.01 |
The ten families with the highest number of specimens are: Poaceae Barnhart (7,728 specimens), Asteraceae Bercht. & J.Presl (6,945 specimens), Fagaceae Dumort. (6,541 specimens), Fabaceae Lindl. (5,277 specimens), Lamiaceae Martinov (3,763 specimens), Caryophyllaceae Juss. (2,528 specimens), Orchidaceae Juss. (2,117 specimens) Brassicaceae Burnett (2,031 specimens), Amaryllidaceae J.St.-Hil. (1,444 specimens), and Liliaceae Juss. (1,372 specimens). Ten genera with the largest number of specimens are: Quercus L. (6,454 specimens), Gagea Salisb.(1,261 specimens), Trifolium L. (1,071 specimens), Narcissus L. (978 specimens), Bromus L. (918 specimens), Silene L. (781 specimens), Centaurea L. (731 specimens), Vitis L. (730 specimens), Ranunculus L. (725 specimens), and Thymus L. (703 specimens) (Fig.
Regarding the genera, those with the greatest number of species and infraespecific taxa (subspecies and varieties) represented are Quercus (81 species, 13 subspecies and 45 hybrids), Centaurea (47 species and 13 subspecies), Euphorbia L. (47 species and 5 subspecies), and Trifolium (47 species and 5 subspecies) (Fig.
The geographical data are structured in the specimens on three levels: geographical coordinates (longitude, latitude, WGS84 datum), MGRS (Military Grid Reference System) coordinates with an accuracy of 10,000 or 1,000 meters (ETRS89 datum) and locality assignment indicating the continent, country, province, municipality and town.
The HSS herbarium database only includes 60 records without continent or country data, 244 records without province data and 466 records without municipality or town data. 40% of the records are georeferenced with geographic coordinates and MRGS coordinates with precision of 1,000 meters, 57.7% of the records are georeferenced with MRGS coordinate assignment with precision of 10.000 meters, and only 2.3% of the records lack coordinates.
The geographical distribution of the materials preserved in the HSS herbarium is concentrated in the European continent (67,914 specimens, 97.8%), with small collections from other continents: Africa (959 specimens, 1.3%), North America (432 specimens, 0.6%), South America (47 specimens, 0.07%), Asia (25 specimens, 0.04%), and Oceania (20 specimens, 0.03%).
The geographical area with the highest number of specimens in the HSS Herbarium is the southwest quadrant of the Iberian Peninsula, which includes the Spanish provinces of Badajoz (27,542 records), Cáceres (20,727 records), Ávila (1,165 records), Salamanca (942 records), Huelva (966 records) and Seville (310 records), and the Portuguese provinces of High Alentejo (2,339 records), Low Alentejo (2,225 records), Algarve (1,112 records), and Estremadura (615 records) (Fig.
In addition, there is notable representation from North Africa [Morocco (748 records) and Tunisia (209 records)], linked to collection trips for the study of the flora of the Atlas Mountains, being important in the description of new species and subspecies (
The HSS herbarium database includes specimens from 1906 to 2019, distributed in two periods: before 1990 the collection was growing from exchanges and donations from private herbaria (1,353 specimens), and after 1990 it was growing due to floristics and research activities (67,813 specimens). Finally, there are 231 specimens without collection data.
Between 1990 and 2019, the period of greatest activity and growth in the collection are the five-year period 2006–2010, with collections of more than 3,500 specimens per year, linked to the study of the unique and threatened flora and the state of conservation of the predominant habitats in Extremadura (
The monthly distribution of the specimens preserved in the HSS herbarium shows that the months with the highest collection activity are March, April, May and June corresponding to spring in the northern hemisphere.
The methodology used at the HSS herbarium for preserving specimens involves pressing and drying the fresh materials. To do this, the fresh material is placed between sheets of blotting paper and thick cardboard, including a sheet of corrugated aluminum foil for every 10–15 specimens, to facilitate drying (
The herbarium storage room is equipped with humidity and temperature control (30% humidity and 10 °C temperature), hermetically sealed mobile shelves and cardboard boxes. The specimens are organized into four groups (ferns, conifers, angiosperms-monocots and other angiosperms). Within each group specimens are ordered alphabetically following the sequence: families, genera, species, subspecies, varieties, and forms.
The HSS herbarium includes 4560 taxa collected in the Iberian Peninsula, excluding hybrids, which represents around 40% of the 11,500 estimated taxa known from the Iberian flora, according to Flora Iberica (Castroviejo 1986–2019) and the web portals GBIF (https://www.gbif.org/), The Plant List (http://www.theplantlist.org/), and Euro + Med PlantBase (https://www.emplantbase.org/).
Regarding the flora of Extremadura, the herbarium holds specimens of 2986 taxa and 113 hybrids, approximately 98% of the taxa known from Extremadura (Castroviejo 1986–2019;
The HSS collection of vascular plants has served as the basis for various scientific works on the flora and vegetation of Extremadura and the bordering territories of Spain and Portugal. Among them are: the reviews and studies of the family Orchidaceae (
In addition, the HSS herbarium actively participates in the “Flora Iberica” project by providing material for the study of various genera of the Iberian Peninsula and Balearic Islands. The work carried out in the HSS herbarium allowed for the creation, in 2007, of the scientific journal “Folia Botanica Extremadurensis” a journal dedicated to scientific works and studies on the flora and vegetation of the southwest Iberian Peninsula.
Finally, the HSS herbarium contains 105 type sheets (82 holotypes, 12 isotypes, 9 paratypes, 1 isoparatype, and 1 neotype) (See Suppl. material
Currently, the HSS herbarium has more than 6,000 sheets, corresponding to the collection trips of 2018–2019, which are not included in the database. The most immediate work is focused updating the database to include these records, and its subsequent updating in the GBIF network. Digitisation of the collection is currently prioritized as well.
Finally, the maintenance of the collection represents processing between 2,000–3,000 specimens annually.
Object name: Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) Herbario HSS Finca La Orden-Valdesequera (CICYTEX). Gobierno de Extremadura
Collection Identifier: 837acfc2-f762-11e1-a439-00145eb45e9a
Character encoding: UTF-8
Format name: Darwin Core Archive format
Format version: 1.7
Distribution: https://doi: 10.15468/siye1z
Publication date of data: 2020-06-25
Language: Spanish
Licences of use: Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial (CC-BY-NC) 4.0 License
Metadata language: Spanish
Date of metadata creation: 2015-03-16
Hierarchy level: Dataset
Acknowledgements to all those who have contributed to the development of the HSS herbarium. To Katia Cezón of the National Biodiversity Information Node (GBIF) for her help in publishing the data and Fergus Crystal for the review and comments of the original English. This work has been made possible thanks to the financing of the call for tenders for Technical Support Personnel (PTA) 2016 (Ministry of Science and Innovation, Government of Spain).