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Hi everyone!

Earlier this month DigiVol reached an extraordinary milestone, when our number of completed tasks ticked over 8-million! This is an amazing testament to the commitment of our volunteers in combination with the collaboration of our institution partners.

Delving into the stats, our 8-millionth task was a camera trap task by long-time institution Bush Heritage Australia, from a Mid-West WA: Eurardy expedition. It was completed on the 11th of January, and the Submit button was clicked by Ian Fairclough (congrats Ian!).

You can see the task here as a European Rabbit wanders into the frame. The shot is a good example of the importance of these camera traps. Multiple sightings of these invasive species in one area can help to focus control methods, and their numbers can be monitored over time.

This series of expeditions will explore the Euphorbiaceae, commonly known as the Spurge family. Found in all continents except Antartica, it contains 234 genera and over 6500 species. It displays a large a variety of forms from trees to small herbaceous plants, climbers and succulents that could easily be mistaken for true cacti! Members of the family are used for food and medicine and the common name ‘Spurge’ comes from the latin ‘espurge’ due to the purgative effects of some species.  

This expedition will focus on collections made in the West Tropical South America region (Herbarium region 17).

In 2021 we began to increase our in-house digitisation capacity with the aim of completing the digitisation of its 3 million specimens in a 5-year programme (2021-2025). The next series of expeditions seek to complement this body of work by enriching the basic online catalogue records produced by the in-house digitisation team with specimen label data.

The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh’s extensive Herbarium numbers nearly three million specimens representing half to two thirds of the world's flora. It is considered a leading botanical collection, and every year many researchers from around the world visit both online and in person to study our specimens.