The Plants of South Asia dataset comprises details of herbarium specimens from the South Asian region and includes botanical specimens Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka and reflects the extensive collections from the South Asian region held in the herbarium at the Natural History Museum.

The dataset comprises over 70,000 specimens of which more than 10,000 are types or original material. The earliest specimens were collected in 1701 but collections from the 20th century account for nearly three quarters of the specimens for which collecting year is recorded. The majority of the specimens were gathered in India (49%). The collections are also particularly rich in specimens from Nepal (18%).

The dataset comprises records generated from two main sources: 1. Records captured through the Global Plants Initiative types project and ‘business as usual’ databasing 2. Records from a number of broad-scale databasing and imaging projects focussed either specifically on collections from the South Asian region or on complete digitisation of groups of plants.

The Natural History Museum V Factor Volunteer Programme enabled volunteers to contribute to mass-digitisation and was a major contributor of records. Funding from the Rutherford Fellowship Programme (funded by the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, UK) and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, India, enabled scientists from the Botanical Survey of India (BSI) to make a substantial contribution to the programme. Records have also been contributed by colleagues from the Museum’s Digital Collections Programme.

Mass digitisation projects have focussed on seed plants and consequently, seed plants are over-represented in the dataset with over 80% of specimens in the dataset from the Museum's seed plant collections. We would ask users to remember that the dataset is not comprehensive and it does not represent the full extent of South Asian material at BM. If you expect to find a specimen at BM but it is not in the dataset, it doesn’t mean we don’t have it. Please get in contact so that we can investigate further by contacting Ranee Prakash (r.prakash@nhm.ac.uk) in the first instance.

Data completeness for records included in this dataset is variable, reflecting the different approaches to digitisation taken. While type digitisation and ‘BAU’ digitisation has typically generated records with detailed locality information, mass-digitisation programmes have generated records with more limited data. In the first instance, the records include only the taxon name, geographical region (South Asia) and an image of the specimen. An ongoing programme is in place to enhance those records with details of collector(s), collection date and collection number and country. The data enhancement work is also being supported by Natural History Museum Volunteers.

Our hope is that the POSA dataset will be of value to the scientific community working on South Asian plants and will contribute towards knowledge of the floras of the countries of the region.