Search help

If you have any questions, queries or wish to give feedback on any aspect of the POWO portal or data, please contact: Biodiversity Informatics team at BI@kew.org

ColFungi has a free text search with a number of advanced features, which are explained below:

Multiple Search Terms

Typing a search and hitting "enter" allows you to type a second term in the search bar. These restrict the results of the previous search. (For example, a search for "macrolepiota" and "neotropical" would give a list of all macrolepiota that are found in neotropical environments.) Individual search terms can be deleted by pressing the x on each one.

Try multiple search terms here

Field Search

Putting a field name and a colon at the start of your search will restrict the search to the selected field (For example, "author: L." will restrict the search to only taxa that were published by Linnaeus.)

Currently, you can use the following field names:

  • Characteristics:
  • summary
  • appearance
  • characteristic
  • use
  • Names:
  • name
  • common name
  • kingdom
  • family
  • genus
  • species
  • author
  • Geography:
  • location

Try a field search here

In addition, ColFungi is part of the UPFC (Useful Plants and Fungi of Colombia) project, and currently holds preliminary information on useful fungi of Colombia. This has come from researchers, previous projects, results from the ColPlantA Internship Program (CIP), visitor researchers (Universidad de los Andes and University College of London), volunteers, and other sources.

If interested in finding uses, type the word use, followed by ":" and one of the ten first level categories of use of the Economic Botany Standards Data (EBDS).

  • Use:
  • Animal food
  • Environmental uses
  • Food
  • Fuels
  • Gene sources
  • Materials
  • Medicines
  • Poisons
  • Social uses
  • Weeds

Try a uses search here

Filters

The filter bar allows you to quickly constrain results by some common terms. For example, you can use it to narrow searches down to results with images, or only families, genera or species.

Try a filter here

TDWG & Geographical Search

POWO uses TDWG regions for its geographical search. These are botanical regions that do not necessarily conform to country borders. Continents are searchable, as are continent sections (For example, "Southern South America." covers Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay)

Try a geographical search here