Tropicos

The Index to Plant Chromosome Numbers was an NSF funded project that aims to extract and index original plant chromosome numbers of naturally occurring and cultivated plants published throughout the world. A committee of voluntary contributing editors, located in various parts of the world, reviews sets of serial titles assigned to them and returns the information to the editors for collation in the Index and database. Chromosome indexes were published at two or three year intervals. The Index to Plant Chromosome Numbers project was based at the Missouri Botanical Garden since 1978. Data from published indexes from 1979 onward are available for consultation through this facility.

For additional information, see the last supplement by Goldblatt & Johnson 2006. Index to Plant Chromosome Numbers 2001-2003. Monographs in Systematic Botany from the Missouri Botanical Garden 106.

An Index covering the years 2004-2006 was published in 2010 as: Goldblatt & Johnson (eds) 2010. Index to Plant Chromosome Numbers 2004-2006. Regmum Vegetabile. Vol. 152.

Many but not all data in the printed version of the Index to Plant Chromosome Numbers (1979-- ) are available on the Web in the IPCN database. The printed indexes and the database provide references to chromosome counts reported in the original literature. We therefore request that the IPCN database itself not be cited as the source for chromosome counts. If there is a need to cite the IPCN database, we recommend the following:

Index to plant chromosome numbers. 1979-- . P. Goldblatt & D. E. Johnson, eds. Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis.

How to use the Chromosome Index.

The chromosome data is available in several different ways. First information is available on the Name screens as a tab for any taxon with counts – click on the ‘chromosome counts’ tab and see the reported counts with reference.

Second, under the System project tab (top yellow banner) there is a link to “IPCN Chromosome Reports” that provides a name search for direct display of counts for each taxon and Browse links for families, genera.

The Family and genera browse options provide links to included taxa on the page under ‘lower taxa’ (genera for families and species for genera) with counts. Click on the taxon link and see all of the species with counts – click on the taxon to see all of the counts for that taxon. The species browse screen provides an alphabetical list of species in the project and the link to displays the counts and references.

Last, next to each family/genus on the browse list or at the bottom of the lower taxa lists under families/genera is an (export) link. This will download a complete list of all the included taxa with counts and references, to the user pc. This ‘.dat’ file is a tab delimited ascii file that can be saved and/or opened with Excel (or other similar programs) that can be used for searches or sorting on the users pc. Note that this may be a very large file if for example one exports all of the counts for Asteraceae rather than only the genera or species that are needed.