International Plant Names Index (IPNI) Scraper
Pricing
Pay per event
International Plant Names Index (IPNI) Scraper
Bulk-extract plant nomenclature records from IPNI (Kew/Harvard/ANBG) — scientific name, authors, protologue publication, BHL scan links, and full author provenance — via the public no-auth REST API.
Pricing
Pay per event
Rating
0.0
(0)
Developer
BowTiedRaccoon
Maintained by CommunityActor stats
0
Bookmarked
2
Total users
1
Monthly active users
2 days ago
Last modified
Categories
Share
Bulk-extract plant nomenclature records from IPNI (the International Plant Names Index — a collaboration between Kew Gardens, Harvard University Herbaria, and the Australian National Botanic Gardens). IPNI is the authoritative global registry of published vascular plant names, covering over 1.7 million nomenclatural acts with full author provenance, protologue citations, and Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) scan links.
What you get
Each record includes:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
ipni_id | IPNI record ID (e.g. 296689-1) |
fq_id | Fully-qualified LSID (e.g. urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:296689-1) |
name | Scientific name |
authors | Author string (abbreviated) |
author_team | Full author team with IPNI IDs and full name+dates (JSON) |
rank | Nomenclatural rank (spec., var., f., etc.) |
family / genus / species / infraspecies | Taxonomic decomposition |
publication | Protologue publication abbreviation |
publication_year | Year published |
reference | Full literature citation |
collation | Volume/page reference |
has_bhl_links | Whether BHL scans exist |
bhl_page_link | BHL deep-link to the protologue page |
tl2_author / tl2_number | Taxonomic Literature 2 provenance |
suppressed | Whether the name is suppressed |
in_powo | Whether accepted in Plants of the World Online |
ipni_url | Full IPNI URL |
Optional enrichment mode (enrich: true) fetches the per-record detail endpoint to add original_remarks and type_locations.
Input
| Parameter | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
queries | string[] | Required. One or more search terms. Each is paginated independently (50 results/page). Accepts genus names, species binomials, author abbreviations, or free text. |
recordType | string | Optional filter: citation, name, author, or publication. Leave blank for all types. |
enrich | boolean | Fetch the per-record /n/<id> detail endpoint for original_remarks, type_locations, and enriched BHL links. Slower but more complete. Default: false. |
maxItems | integer | Maximum total records to return across all queries. Default: 15. |
Use cases
- Biodiversity informatics pipelines — resolve plant name strings against the authoritative nomenclatural index and attach full author provenance.
- Herbarium digitisation — link specimen label names to IPNI records for authoritative citation and LSID anchoring.
- AI training datasets — build botanical-nomenclature corpora with publication year, author team, and BHL scan provenance for LLM training.
- Flora and checklist projects — bulk-retrieve name records for a genus or family with protologue citations and suppression flags.
- Citation graph research — extract the author-team + TL2 provenance layer that POWO/GBIF/USDA do not carry.
Notes
- The IPNI API is public with no authentication required.
- No proxy is used — direct requests at polite concurrency (400 ms between pages).
- Pagination is automatic: each query sweeps all available pages up to
maxItems. enrich: trueadds a second HTTP request per record — increasemaxItemsconservatively.- IPNI covers vascular plants and some bryophytes; it is distinct from POWO (accepted taxonomy + distribution) and GBIF (occurrence data).
