Example Searches

Contents

• Searching for Plant Names in IPNI

  • Quick Search

  • Full Search

  • Extended Search options

• Searching for Authors in IPNI

• Searching for Publications in IPNI

• Boolean Searches in IPNI

  • Widening searches with OR

  • Narrowing searches with AND

  • Excluding values with NOT

Example Plant Name Searches

You will also find you're getting duplicates of some names coming from the different indexes (About the index explains the differences between the indexes). If you want to exclude data from one of the indexes you can use the check buttons to select some or all of them. For example this would only retrieve data from the Gray Index and IK:

Searching by Author

If you want to find all the names that were published by a particular author then use the author search term. Wild cards are helpful here because a lot of the author data in IPNI has not yet been standardised. The following search will retrieve everything published by Brummitt, and everything where the basionym was originally published by Brummitt:

Using the author check boxes will enable you to narrow your search to only find names where the author is the author of the name, or to only find names where the author is the author of the basionym. The basionym author is the name in parentheses before the main author. So in Calystegia stebbinsii Brummitt, Brummitt is the taxon name author, and in Calpurnia indica (Brummitt) Yakovlev Brummitt is the basionym author and Yakovlev is the taxon name author (in this case the author of the combination). The search below would retrieve Calystegia stebbinsii, but not Calpurnia indica

Searching by other terms

Publication title will allow you to retrieve names by the journal or book in which they were originally published. It can be quite a slow search, and many publications aren't standardised so use wild cards.

This will retrieve everything that was published in journals or books beginning Eryth

Searching by Family name will give you everything published within a family. This is another part of IPNI that hasn't been standardised yet, so treat it with caution (see Understanding the Data for details of why). Infrafamilial names are things like tribes, subfamilies, subtribes and supertribes. The search will retrieve just the infrafamilial name details, not all the names within that infrafamilial group.

Infrageneric names, like infrafamilial names will just give you the infrageneric names themselves, not all of the names within that infrageneric group. Infrageneric names are things like subgenera, series and sects.

This search will retrieve all the infrafamilial names within Orchidaceae beginning with A:

Clicking on 'show additional search terms...' in the full search form will expand the form to display the extended search options. Please note that these searches will usually only work for more recent records in IPNI. We are working towards making these more generally applicable but before you use them please read and inwardly digest the distribution and record date help notes.

The following search will retrieve all Orchid records from Brazil, added since the beginning of 2005:

You can enter a number of different countries at a time by using OR. For example, this would retrieve all of the (recent) records from Kenya, Uganda or Tanzania:

Back to the Name Query page

Example Author Searches

The most common and useful search is probably by surname. IPNI includes alternative versions of some authors names such as Linnaeus, also known as Linné so searching by either Linnaeus or Linne or Linné will work (note that you don't need to put in the accented character in the search term).

You can narrow your search by including a forename. It is advisable to include wild cards at the end or you may get no results at all as some author records only have initials, and some have the full forename or forenames.

This search will retrieve all the Smiths with first names beginning with 'A':

Use the Standard Form to find out the name of an author given the standard form (also known as the author abbreviation). You may have seen authors cited as part of a scientific name - for example, in Poa agrostidea DC., 'DC.' is the standard form for the author of Poa agrostidea. To find out about this author, you could search as follows:

Finally, you can also search for authors by country, for example Australia or Brazil. This data is incomplete at the moment, so you won't get an exhaustive list - just those for which we have the information.

Back to the Author Query page

Example Publication Searches

This screen will allow you to find out about publications where names have been published by either the full title, or the standard short form. (See the pages on Understanding the data for information about how these were determined). Publications can be either books or serial publications such as journals

For instance, to find out when Linnaeus' Species Plantarum was published, you could search as follows:

That will retrieve information about the first edition only - if you want to find out about subsequent editions then use a wild card at the end (This is recommended for most title searches as the full title can be extremely long):

IK and Gray Card index records usually use abbreviations to record the publication of a name (the APNI data tends to give the full journal or book title). To find out about a publication given an abbreviated title then use the Publication Abbreviation box to search on. For instance the journal 'Taxon' (full title: 'Taxon; Official News Bulletin of the International Society for Plant Taxonomy') can be found as follows:

Back to the Publication Query page

Example Boolean Searches

Boolean searches (combining terms with 'and', 'not' and 'or') can increase the efficiency of your searching by allowing you to search against multiple terms at once using 'OR', or to narrow your search by combining your terms with 'AND', or to exclude particular values using 'NOT'.

Widening your searches with 'OR'

The boolean OR (NB - case is important) allows you to search on two or more values in the same field simultaneously. For example, to find all records in either the genus Poa or the genus Zea:

You can combine these terms with other ones to narrow the search; for example this will only retrieve those species beginning with 'a' that are in Poa or Zea:

Note that you should include spaces around the 'OR'.

You can use the boolean OR in name searches, author searches or publication searches, in the following fields:

• Name search terms: Family, Genus, Species, Infrafamilial, Infrageneric, Infraspecific, Authors, Distribution

• Author search terms: Forename, Surname, Abbreviation, Country

• Publication search terms: Title, Abbreviation

Narrowing your searches with 'AND'

The boolean AND (again, case is important) allows you to search for only those records where both values provided are true. This really only makes sense for the authors field of a plant name record, where more than one author is recorded for a name.

For example, to find names that were published by both Durieu AND J.Parn. (including names where one or other of the authors might have been the author of the basionym):

This retrieves only names such as Jasione corymbosa Poir. var. glabra (Durieu ex Boiss. & Reuter) J.Parn. where both authors are included.

In contrast, the OR search would retrieve lots more records:

Including names such as Jasione montana L. var. imbricans J.Parn. and Linosyris ceruminosa Durieu & Hilg.

Excluding records from your searches with 'NOT'

The boolean NOT (again, case is important) allows you to eliminate records from your searches.

For example, to retrieve all records in Poa where the species name does NOT begin with a:

Note: please make sure you use this in combination with another search term, or the number of records you retrieve will be so large that it will have to be truncated, and other users' searches will be slowed down as a result.

You can use NOT in any of the fields where you can use OR.

Back to IPNI Home