Organisation and Management of Seed Reference Collections

Reference collections of accurately identified, recent seeds are an essential resource for seed identification in archaeobotany, agronomy, palaeoecology and studies of wildlife diet. Recommendations are given for sourcing of seed materials and storage systems. The usefulness of computer databases for cataloguing of seed collections is emphasised, and 18 core data fields (based on the HISPID data standard for herbarium collections) are proposed.