Digitising the Grootbos Plant Collection

This week, Grootbos Foundation welcomed Maxine and Jabulile from the Natural Science Collections Facility (NSCF) who will spend the next 2 weeks barcoding and imaging the Grootbos Foundation plant herbarium which houses almost 2'000 specimens. This is the first private plant collection to be digitised as part of the NSCF Herbarium Imaging project!

During digitisation, specimen images and their associated data will be entered onto a "virtual museum". Barcodes serve as a permanent, unique identifier to link physical specimens with digital data and images.

The purpose of this virtual museum is to make specimen records more accessible to researchers, to ensure the security of specimens against loss or damage, and to improve data sharing and collaboration across national and international biodiversity platforms.