BRAHMS is developed at the Department of Biology, University of Oxford.
Updated November 2025
BRAHMS includes a diverse range of practical tools for managing both preserved and living collections together with features that support research in systematics, biogeography and the analysis of diversity, all encouraging and facilitating publication of data otherwise locked up in collection archives.
BRAHMS development started around 1990 with an initial focus on taxonomic research and herbarium management, hence the name Botanical Research And Herbarium Management System. Over the years, the system broadened its capabilities with heavy investment in managing data for botanic gardens, seed banks and field surveys and, in particular, integrating data across collection types in larger institutions.
Fast forwarding to 2025, the system is now deployed globally with projects ranging in size from the taxonomic revisions of small genera to managing some of the world's largest herbaria, botanic gardens and seed banks. The largest single database with over 7 million museum specimens runs at the Naturalis Museum in the Netherlands. The country with the largest number of individual projects is Brazil.
Software updates are issued several times each year, these documented on our software revisions page. Full user guidelines are provided in the BRAHMS user guide.
The project, developed and managed by Denis Filer and Andrew Liddell, is based in the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford. Software licensing is managed by Oxford University Innovation (OUI).
| Project | Details |
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| Oxford University Herbaria and related research programmes | The historical development of BRAHMS is closely linked to the Oxford University Herbaria. More broadly, BRAHMS has coevolved with the plant diversity research activities at Oxford and the ongoing work on taxonomy, phylogenetics, forest ecology, biodiversity and conservation. As well as contributing to a fundamental understanding of plant diversity, BRAHMS assists these projects to develop and publish practical outputs that help measure, manage and conserve this diversity globally.
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| Oxford Botanic Garden and Arboretum | Oxford Botanic Garden, as well as being the first botanic garden in the UK (founded in 1621), at the UK’s oldest University, also undertakes research. Their focus is evolutionary and reproductive biology, and conservation linked to biodiversity hotspots around the world.
With plant reproduction and evolution, they are exploring fundamental processes in plant reproduction and evolution using genetics and genomics, in close collaboration with scientists at the University of Oxford’s Plant Sciences Department and further afield. Working with botanists around the world, they are developing ex situ conservation plant collections of species from biodiversity hotspots – areas with high plant species richness. Their research collectively focuses on the Mediterranean Basin, Ethiopian and Japanese floristic regions.
Oxford Botanic Garden is a BRAHMS development partner |
| National Institute of Amazonian Research | The National Institute of Amazonian Research (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia or INPA) is located in Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil. It is home to the largest herbarium in the Amazon region with over 300,000 botanical specimens. The collection is fully digitized and imaged. INPA have been using BRAHMS for the last 20 years to catalogue and image their collections. INPA are now using near-infrared spectroscopy with specimen leaf scans to build up a massive data bank that will help with specimen identification.
The herbarium at the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (INPA), located in Manaus, is an active research centre documenting plant collections and studying regional biodiversity. Photo provided by Mike Hopkins, INPA curator. |
| National Parks Board, Singapore | We have been working with the Singapore National Herbarium since 2005. As of 2025, an exciting new project has been developed with the Singapore National Parks Board (NParks). Among many other activities, NParks leads efforts in biodiversity documentation and conservation in Singapore. The new BRAHMS project will merge data from the Singapore Botanic Gardens, Herbarium, Seed and DNA banks into an integrated, cloud-based biodiversity management system. The living and preserved collections include materials mostly from the Malesian biogeographic region and adjacent areas with the most extensive collections from Singapore and Peninsular Malaysia, these dating from the 1880s.
Singapore Botanic Garden, Herbarium, Seed and DNA bank. |
| National Forestry Herbarium, New Zealand |
The National Forestry Herbarium (NZFRI), now integrated with the New Zealand Bioeconomy Science Institute, specialises in cultivated tree species associated with forestry and amenity planting, and includes extensive collections of eucalyptus and pine species. It also contains a wide range of New Zealand native and naturalised plants and is the regional herbarium for the Bay of Plenty, East Cape and central North Island of New Zealand.
National Forestry Herbarium, New Zealand |
| PBI Solanum: A worldwide treatment | The Solanum project moved from BRAHMS v7 to v8 during 2023, at the same time moving their data to a cloud server running PostgreSQL. The project aims to provide a worldwide taxonomic monograph of the nightshade family whose species are used as food (potatoes, tomatoes and eggplants), medicines (henbane and deadly nightshades) and in horticulture (petunias). Solanum is one of a handful of genera with over 1000 species. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the Solanum project as part of the Planetary Biodiversity Inventories (PBI) mission.
Solanaceae. |
| The Eden Project | The Eden Project migrated their data to BRAHMS in 2023. This fascinating project is dominated by two huge enclosures consisting of adjoining domes that house thousands of plant species. Each enclosure emulates a natural biome. The larger of the two biomes simulates a rainforest environment, the largest indoor rainforest in the world, and the second, a Mediterranean environment.
Eden Project. |
| Chicago Botanic Garden (CBG) | Chicago Botanic Garden adopted BRAHMS in 2022. With CBG, we have collaboratively developed new components to manage curator’s requests for plants, be these seasonal or for permanent accessioning. Requests are processed in stages from approval, scheduling and ordering through propagation/production to the delivery of plants to the required garden locations. The new module known as RSO (Request, Schedule, Order) is now fully integrated into the BRAHMS system and has its own RDE component for the Rapid Data Entry of new plant requests..
Chicago Botanic Garden. |
| The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) | The RHS use BRAHMS to manage their names backbone, herbarium and living collections across their network of botanic gardens (Wisley, Rosemoor, Hyde Hall, Harlow Carr and Bridgewater). The RHS-BRAHMS database is primarily manged from the Hilltop Science Centre at Wisley. Together with the RHS, we have developed and implemented a new system to manage the complexity of cultivated plant names, bringing together elements of the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN) and The International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants (ICNCP). This new system for managing cultivated plant species names help guide the horticultural community worldwide to assign the correct names to plants. The RHS-BRAHMS database also provides the data used to supply their online system which is used by the general public to locate plants suitable for home growing. Read about our collaboration with RHS on Oxford teams up with The Royal Horticultural Society to develop innovative plant data management.
The University of Oxford is working with The Royal Horticultural Society, the UK’s gardening charity, to make information about plants more readily available to everyone with an interest in gardens and garden plants. |
| RHS Plant Finder | Using our online tools, plant stock data from over 600 nurseries in the UK and Europe are gathered each year into the RHS central BRAHMS database. These data are then checked and verified against their tightly controlled species names list. The data are then assembled and formatted via BRAHMS reporting tools to publish the RHS Plant Finder.
Each year, data for the RHS Plant Finder are assembled from over 600 plant nurseries using BRAHMS and BRAHMS online tools . |
| The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew | Working closely with Kew horticultural and IT staff, functionality in BRAHMS has been extended to manage Kew's extensive living plant collections with many new features and functions added, based on their long-established horticultural practices. These include features that help to prioritise areas for stock inventory, verify and update plant names, plant labelling, stock movements and periodic reporting.
Kew's living plant collections are located at Kew Gardens in London and at Wakehurst Place further south in Sussex, the latter also home to the Millennium Seed Bank. |
| SANBI | The South African National Biodiversity Institute manages species, preserved and living collection data from across the country, gathering these into a single BRAHMS database - also published using BRAHMS online to Southern African plant names and floristic details. This is one of the largest BRAHMS databases with data from the main herbaria and botanic gardens of South Africa.
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| The Morton Arboretum | Managing the Morton Arboretum Garden and Herbarium. The Morton Arboretum, Illinois, USA has been a co-developer of BRAHMS for living and preserved collection management. A sample map search online of their Malus collection in the garden.
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| Conifers of the World | A database of all conifer taxa with complete nomenclature and geo-referenced specimens published to BRAHMS online. Used as the basis for numerous publications including several revisions and monographs; A World Checklist and Bibliography of Conifers; The Handbook of the World's Conifers; and An Atlas of the World's Conifers - An Analysis of Their Distribution, Biogeography, Diversity and Conservation Status. View the natural distribution of the family Araucariaceae.
One of the recently added data analysis features is complete integration with ArcGIS allowing users to interact with maps to interpret and evaluate the distribution of taxa. |
| The Millennium Seed Bank Partnership |
The Millennium Seed Bank's global network, The Millennium Seed Bank Partnership (MSBP), is the largest ex situ plant conservation programme in the world. BRAHMS is used to collate seed bank data from more than 100 countries from across the Seed Bank Partnership.
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| The Flora of Namibia | About 4000 seed plants are indigenous to Namibia and almost 15% are considered endemic to the country. There are about 164 families of higher plants and of these, 32 are represented by only one species. In contrast the most diverse families are those known to be among the largest families worldwide including the Poaceae, Asteraceae and Leguminosae. These data are assembled in BRAHMS and published as a comprehensive flora and online resource with maps and images. Check out images for the Aizoaceae.
Zooming in to an image of Cheiridopsis caroli-schmidtii. |
| The National Museums of Kenya |
The East African Herbarium maintains the largest botanical collection in tropical Africa. Presently holding more than 700,000 plant specimens and accompanying field notes it acts as a major regional as well as national reference centre. Currently, NMK are imaging their herbarium specimens and publishing these online.
Several digitising stations have been set up in the herbarium, each with a Nikon D750, LED lighting and the appropriate hardware for translating data from the image labels into Rapid Data Entry tables. |
Trinidad and Tobago |
The National Herbarium of Trinidad and Tobago (TRIN) currently houses more than 50,000 botanical specimens. Their objectives include activities to maintain and expand the flora collection for Trinidad and Tobago; provide an accurate plant identification service; promote interest in the local flora; and disseminate information about the local flora; develop its capabilities as a resource centre for botanical information.
A database for the National Herbarium and documenting the flora of Trinidad and Tobago with a national checklist of taxa. |
| The National Herbarium of the Netherlands (NHN) | The largest BRAHMS database with over 5 million collection entries. NHN originated as a cooperation of the 3 major herbaria of the Netherlands (L, U & WAG), and is now the botanical part of Naturalis Biodiversity Center.
In a database of this size, a query on Zingiberaceae specimens collected between 1800 and 1900 still results in over 80,000 records.
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| The Ancient Oaks of England | England is the hotspot for ancient oak trees in Europe with more ancient oaks than all other European countries combined. This BRAHMS database and website brings together data on the ancient and veteran native oak trees of England, their distribution, history and ecology. The history of oaks in England.
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| Red Butte Botanic Garden | Red Butte is the main botanic garden in Utah with an impressive collection that includes many native plants. Check out a video mapping plants at Red Butte. |
| An e-monograph of the Caricaceae | This website is a taxonomic resource for the papaya family. It will help experts and enthusiasts identify a species, find its relatives and improve their understanding of this interesting family of flowering plants.
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| Trower Botanical Illustrations | A project providing access to the general botanical watercolours, the bramble illustrations and Druce Illustrations by Charlotte Georgina Trower.
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| Oxford Plants 400 | A fascinating set of species pages developed at Oxford Plant Sciences and Botanic Garden. Check out Coffee, Rice and Cinnamon.
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| L'Erbario di Ulisse Aldrovandi | The collection by Ulisse Aldrovandi is one of the oldest survived to this day and, no doubt, one of the widest of the XVI Century. Aldrovandi probably begun his herbarium in 1551 and kept on working on it lifelong, gathering more than 5,000 specimens bound in 15 volumes. In 2004 the entire collection has been digitized and published on-line with free access giving the opportunity to researchers from all over the world to study this precious and unique collection. |
| RBG Kew UKOT Online Herbarium |
The RBG Kew UK Overseas Territories (UKOT) Online Herbarium provides access to virtual herbaria
for sixteen UKOT projects. In the first instance, these comprises digitized geo-referenced herbarium specimens from Kew's collection together with associated data, field images and key botanical literature.
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BRAHMS project
Department of Biology
University of Oxford
South Parks Road
Oxford OX1 3RB
UK
Reception: +44 (0)1865-275000
BRAHMS: +44 (0)1865-275129
Technical queries: brahms@biology.ox.ac.uk
Licensing queries: contact Oxford University Innovation email: brahms@innovation.ox.ac.uk .