cvh.ac.cn

The National Plant Specimen Resource Center (NPSRC) is a national science and technology resource-sharing platform approved by China’s Ministry of Science and Technology and Ministry of Finance. Built around 16 influential or distinctive plant and fungal specimen collections, together with four former NSII subplatforms, it is supported by the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Its online sharing platform is the Chinese Virtual Herbarium (CVH), which provides access to specimen records and related botanical resources.

Users can search plant specimens, including type specimens, and explore seed specimens, teaching collections, nature-reserve collections, and polar specimens. The platform also offers botanical databases and reference materials, including historical collection-place names, an index of Chinese herbaria, plant name authors, systematic literature, and illustrated terminology for plant identification and description. Additional resources include species lists, a DNA barcode library, a plant image library, and a database of rare and endangered plants, with some resources still under development. Search tools allow filtering by province, holding institution, flowers, fruits, type status, and photograph availability.