Search the Database
Species with Ecochars
Alien Species
All Species
Synonyms
Species/Characteristics
Ecological Characteristics
Associated Fungi
Phytophagous Insects
Vernacular Name
Glossary
Contacts
Links
Help
News
Citing the Database

This allows you to enter a species name and from that name, gather all the data associated with that species. The Species with Ecochars lists all species for which we have entries in the Ecological Characteristics table, most of the British Native species (omitting the rarest) and 200 of the commoner, established Alien species (a total of 1848 species). The Alien Species option lists all the alien species. All Species option lists all 3,258 species (together with 582 synonyms.

This allows you to enter the name of a fungus found on a plant, a part of a plant on which a fungus is found, a type of attack, or a name of a disease, and obtain details of the fungus itself.If you wish to search for those fungi found on a particular plant, please go to the plant species pages.

This is the same as the species , but the search is performed on the vernacular name rather than the Latin binomial.

The Ecological Database of the British Isles has been constructed from a wide variety of sources by Dr Helen Peat and Professor Alastair Fitter at the University of York, with financial support from the British Ecological Society and the Natural Environment Research Council. It consists of data on 3842 species of higher plants that occur in the British Isles, together with the bibliography of sources. This version has been produced by Dr Henry Ford.

The data comprises information on taxonomy (family, genus, specific name, authority, and vernacular name, together with a synonomy), a suite of over 130 ecological and morphological characteristics, vice-county distribution in Britain, European distribution by country, mycorrhizal associations, associated phytophagous insects and fungi. The data are obtained from the literature and therefore coverage varies greatly between species. The data set is therefore incomplete.

Navigate by means of the menu on the left. Please report factual errors or missing data to ecoflora@york.ac.uk and web errors to Dr Henry Ford hen3ryford@googlemail.com.

The current version is being continually updated and users are encouraged to submit data. The species list now has over 1800 aliens for which we have data from the English Nature Audit of Alien Species. Some 200 of these taxa have data in the ecological characteristics table and we will be adding to this table as resources permit. The ecological characteristics table now includes 33,000 records from the PLANTATT dataset, kindly provided by M.O. Hill, covering 1637 of the species (including all the native taxa). Over 100 species have had their datasets updated from the Biological Flora papers in the Journal of Ecology. The UK distribution for all species has been enhanced by providing direct links to the NBN Gateway Distribution Maps. The associated fungi have been updated with some 3200 fungi and over 20,000 records, and the associated insect data includes 3.900 insects and 8,500 records. The Millennium Seed Bank, Kew, have kindly allowed us to incorporate their germination data for British native plants which is appended to the ecological characteristics results for each species. Descriptions have been added for all the native and established alien plants in the database and descriptions of the less commmon aliens are being added. Photographs are being added regularly.

This searches the database for all synonyms and returns the name, associated synonyms and the status of each name.

This enables you to search on an insect name and retrieve details on the plant parts attacked, the type of attack, the primary and other hosts. If you wish to search for those insects attacking a particular plant, please go to the plant species pages.

This allows you to retrieve all the species which conform to a particular value of an ecological characteristic. There is a list of characteristics, their values, and notes available from this page .

A glossary of botanical terms

Contact the managers of the ecoflora with comments and new data

Links to some Biological, Environmental, scientific and governmental web sites relevant to wildlife in the UK

This provides a description of the ecological characteristics tables, hints to photographers, etc. A complete data dictionary is not provided.

If you need to cite the database, this gives you the information you require.

The latest information on new features, updates, and proposed alterations to the database

This allows you to select 20 species and any number of ecological characteristics and retrieve the data in tabular form