Flora Batava (1800–1934): From Historical Citizen Science to Plant Humanities Dataset

Flora Batava: people, plants, locations lists 11,500+ records of all species in the first illustrated flora of the Netherlands, published in 28 volumes between 1800 and 1934. The dataset includes information about the plants, the people who observed them in each locality, and the publication of each volume. KB, the National Library of the Netherlands holds both original and digitized source material. From the latter, data was segmented and extracted using a generative AI model (OpenAI’s GPT-4), then checked and corrected manually. Including social (e.g., observers’ names, sex) and historical information (e.g., old plant names, publication history), this dataset facilitates research in plant humanities, botanical heritage, and social history of science.