Butler University Friesner Herbarium (BUT)

Occurrence Specimen
Latest version published by USF Water Institute on Mar 29, 2026 USF Water Institute
Publication date:
29 March 2026
Published by:
USF Water Institute
License:
CC0 1.0

Download the latest version of this resource data as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) or the resource metadata as EML or RTF:

Data as a DwC-A file download 44,646 records in English (6 MB) - Update frequency: weekly
Metadata as an EML file download in English (10 KB)
Metadata as an RTF file download in English (8 KB)

Description

The Friesner Herbarium is a systematic collection of over 100,000 dried, pressed and preserved plant specimens. The Herbarium, third largest in the state, grew out of the personal collections of Dr. Ray C. Friesner, Professor and Chair of the Botany Department, 1920-1952. Many students and other Butler faculty have contributed plants through the years. The specimens, with their carefully documented labels, comprise a reference library on historical distribution, habitats, and timing of flower and fruit production. The collection's voucher specimens serve to verify plant identification. Although the Herbarium contains plants from around the world, the collection emphasizes plants of Indiana. The collection has samples of 96% of the approximately 2500 taxa of native Indiana plants. Multiple specimens are present for most plants, providing more information than single drawings or photographs from books to assist in learning what a plant looks like. Most of our collections were made during the first half of the century and now constitute documentation of Indiana's historical vegetation. They also provide information on the habitat (e.g., woods, swamp, prairie) where plants were collected and would likely be found again.

Data Records

The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 44,646 records.

2 extension data tables also exist. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated below.

Occurrence (core)
44646
ResourceRelationship 
44646
Multimedia 
43565

This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.

Versions

The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.

How to cite

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

Dolan, R.W. and M.E. Moore (2017) Indiana Plant Atlas. Indiana.PlantAtlas.org. [S.M. Landry and K.N. Campbell (original application development), USF Water Institute. University of South Florida]. Butler University Friesner Herbarium, Indianapolis, Indiana.

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is USF Water Institute. To the extent possible under law, the publisher has waived all rights to these data and has dedicated them to the Public Domain (CC0 1.0). Users may copy, modify, distribute and use the work, including for commercial purposes, without restriction.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 54086159-ab02-4669-bc8a-0ad4be3dbfef.  USF Water Institute publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by GBIF-US.

Keywords

Occurrence; Specimen; Occurrence

Contacts

Rebecca W. Dolan
  • Originator
  • Point Of Contact
  • Director
Butler University
  • 4600 Sunset Avenue.
46208 Indianapolis
Indiana
US
  • +1-317-940-9413
Marcia Moore
  • Metadata Provider
  • User
  • Assistant
Butler University
  • 4600 Sunset Avenue.
46208 Indianapolis
Indiana
US
  • +1-317-940-8302

Project Data

The Indiana Plant Atlas is a botany resource for plant enthusiasts, professionals, students and teachers. The IPA is a joint effort by the Indiana Herbarium Consortium and Butler University to provide users with a comprehensive searchable database of plants that occur growing outside of cultivation in Indiana. The IPA provides a source of information for each species, including the distribution within the state using historical and recent data.

Title Indiana Plant Atlas Project
Funding Funded by a Butler Innovation Grant for 3 years for development and maintenance of the site.
Study Area Description The Atlas will contain all of the records from our Indiana specimen database (approximately 46,000), including the images from specimen sheets that have been digitally imaged (~ 20,000 so far).
Design Description We will be working with a team from the Plant Atlas at the University of South Florida to provide the template which has successfully been used for three other states. In addition to posting our records, our hope is to build an Indiana Consortium of botanical collections from around the state. This would include vouchered records from herbaria as well as documented inventories.

The personnel involved in the project:

Rebecca W. Dolan
  • Principal Investigator

Collection Data

Collection Name Butler University, Friesner Herbarium
Collection Identifier urn:lsid:biocol.org:col:15725
Parent Collection Identifier Not applicable
Specimen preservation methods Dried and pressed

Additional Metadata

Alternative Identifiers 54086159-ab02-4669-bc8a-0ad4be3dbfef
https://ipt.plantatlas.usf.edu/resource?r=but_herb