About Lichen Catalog

Catalog of Lichens

The Duke Lichen Herbarium now provides over 90,000 herbarium specimen records online. The online catalog is updated biweekly.

Usnea
Photo Credit: B. Shaw

Questions about the database or its use should be addressed to Scott LaGreca.

The author abbreviations of scientific names are used according to the North American Lichen Checklist or the Index of Fungi (for taxa from other regions).

The name of the person who made the determination, and names of collectors are presented in the format: Last name, First name, Middle initial.

Users have the option to download all Search Results as comma-delimited text file (button CSV).

DUKE lichen herbarium uses barcode as a unique identifier. Barcode refers to the barcode attached to the specimen.

FAQs

Haematomma
Photo Credit: B. Shaw

Cannot find your taxon in the catalog? Try other nomenclatural combinations of the taxon name. We welcome your feedback on errors in our data related to taxonomic and nomenclatural synonyms!

Using non-english alphabet? Please try searching persons and localities both with and without accents in the names. Send us your feedback.

Are images of the plant or the specimen label available? We don't have lichen images available. There are label images available for part of the North American specimens. You can view them on the Lichen Portal.

Am I searching your database directly? The web search is querying a web cache; you are not searching the catalog directly. The web cache is being updated biweekly.

Can I search on the original determination of a specimen? Only current name is provided on the lichen portal for each specimen. However, our catalog does contain previous identifications. Email us your query, we'll email you the data.

Unsolvable problems? Contact us.

Cladonea rapppii
Photo Credit: B. Shaw

Acknowledgments

Databasing lichen records in DUKE was supported by NSF grant award no. 1115001 to F. Lutzoni & A.J. Shaw, and by the Duke University. This project would not have been successful without generous IT support of Susan Gerbeth Jones, Blaine Ott, and Specify software team. The Duke Library Digital Production Center imaged some of the lichen specimen labels, and we're grateful for much help to Alex Marsh, Mike Adamo, and many work-study students.