Linking specimens, field images, publications, archival materials, and other resources across BRIT/FWBG and California Botanic Garden
Sherwin Carlquist (1930–2021) was one of the preeminent botanists of the twentieth century. His foundational contributions to wood anatomy, island biogeography, and plant systematics — spanning more than 340 publications over six decades — continue to shape how researchers understand plant evolution and the colonization of island ecosystems. Learn more on Wikipedia or view his Wikidata record.
The Sherwin Carlquist Digital Extended Specimen Network connects the physical and digital traces of his scientific career into a unified, interoperable resource: botanical specimens, field photographs, published research, and archival collections held at the Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT) and the California Botanic Garden. By linking these materials and making them machine-readable through open standards and Wikidata integration, the network ensures that Carlquist's legacy remains accessible and useful to researchers, educators, and the public.
The project is a collaboration between BRIT at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden and California Botanic Garden, supported by the National Science Foundation (Awards 2133562 and 2133561).
The Botanical Research Institute of Texas holds the Sherwin Carlquist Collection, including correspondence, reprints, field materials, and related archives. An overview of the collection and the broader ESN project is available on the FWBG website.
Digitized field images from the collection are accessible through the Portal to Texas History.
The California Botanic Garden (CalBG) Herbarium (RSA) holds vascular plant specimens collected by Carlquist throughout his career, particularly from Pacific islands and California. The RSA collection is one of the most significant herbaria in the western United States.
The CalBG Xylarium (RSA-Wood) houses the wood specimens central to Carlquist's comparative anatomy research. It is one of the premier wood collections in the western hemisphere and a key resource for wood anatomy studies.
An interactive concept diagram showing how the resources in this project — specimens, media, field notes, field images, and publications — map onto the Extended Specimen Network framework. Hover any bubble for a description; click an active bubble to jump to the underlying resource.
Comprehensive bibliographic metadata for all 343 known Carlquist publications, spanning 1956–2021. The dataset follows CSL-JSON and Dublin Core standards and includes companion lookup tables for journals and co-authors. All records carry Wikidata QIDs. Published under CC0.
An interactive dashboard for browsing, filtering, and visualizing all 343 publications. Filter by year, journal, publication type, or co-author; view charts of publication patterns; and follow links directly to Wikidata items and source records.
All 343 publications have been matched to or created as Wikidata items, enabling linked open data queries across the scholarly record. Carlquist's person record, all publication items, and journal items are interlinked and queryable via the Wikidata Query Service.