A pan-European Seed list

Using a simple code word – ebgconsortiumindexseminum+year – to provide a unique identifier to every on-line seed-list issued by a European garden to enable searching.

The European Botanic Gardens Consortium intends to put the power of internet search engines to use to generate a European wide (and next, we hope, Global) seed list. Many Botanic Gardens already put their Indices Seminum on the internet. By adding a unique code word to each of these pages, a search can be performed that will retrieve all records from these pages alone.

At present the National Botanic Gardens Glasnevin seed list provides the test bed for: ebgconsortiumindexseminum. Combining this word with a genus or species name will retrieve all pages of our last year’s seed list that contain the specified plant. Hopefully with Gardens across Europe adopting the system, searching for seeds on offer will be easier than ever before.

See European Consortium webpage for more information.

This is an elegant solution to databasing or pooling information, and uses the power of other organisations to do the indexing. If your Garden has an on-line seed list, I would be delighted to hear from you, to see if you are willing to take part.

Matthew Jebb
National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin
(Matthew.Jebb@opw.ie)