Sepal

Add and edit accessions

The accession form field by field, and the tabs that open once the record exists.

An accession is one arrival of one taxon. This page describes the accession form field by field and the tabs that open once a record exists. Your first week walks through creating the first one step by step.

Create an accession

Select Accessions in the sidebar, then select New accession. Fill in the form and select Save. Sepal requires a Code and a Taxon. Every other field is optional, and you can fill it in later.

Creating an accession needs an account with permission to create records. A reader who opens an accession sees the summary panel rather than the form.

Identity

Code is your garden’s accession number, and it has to be unique. Sepal does not impose a format. Gardens commonly use the year and a serial number, such as 2026.0001.

Taxon is the botanical name of the accession. Start typing a name and select one of the results. The field searches the taxa your instance holds, so you rarely have to add a name yourself.

ID Qualifier and ID Qualifier Rank record how confident the identification is. They are covered in Qualify an uncertain identification below.

Provenance

Provenance records how the plant came to be where it is. Both fields on this form are optional.

Provenance Type takes one of Wild, Cultivated, Not wild, Purchase, and Insufficient data. The glossary lists what each value means.

Wild Provenance Status takes one of Wild native, Wild non native, Cultivated native, Cultivated, Not wild, Purchase, and Insufficient data. Set it only for wild-collected material. Sepal does not clear it when you change the provenance type, so check it if you revise a record.

Supplier is the nursery, garden, or collector the plant came from. The field points at a contact, and you search it the same way you search for a taxon.

Placement

Intended location is the location the material is meant to go into before anything is planted. Leave it empty until the bed is decided.

Setting it puts the accession in the location’s Awaiting planting section, where a Plant here link opens the material form with the accession already filled in. The accession leaves that section as soon as it has material in the location it was intended for.

Dates

Date Received is the day the plant reached you. Date Accessioned is the day you entered it in the collection. Both are optional, and both take a date rather than a year alone.

Qualify an uncertain identification

When the name on the label is not certain, record the doubt rather than leaving it out of the record.

  1. Open the accession and stay on the General tab.
  2. Under Identity, set ID Qualifier to one of aff, cf, forsan, incorrect, near, and questionable.
  3. Set ID Qualifier Rank to the rank the doubt applies to. The values are Below family, Family, Genus, Species, First infraspecific epithet, Second infraspecific epithet, and Cultivar.
  4. Select Save.

Both fields are optional and independent of each other. Sepal stores the qualifier beside the name and leaves the name itself alone, so the accession still matches a search for the taxon you recorded.

Edit an accession

Open the accession from the Accessions list. The General tab holds the same form you filled in when you created the record. Change what you need and select Save, or select Cancel to reload the record as it was.

Every save writes an activity, so the Activity section of the panel shows who changed the record and when.

The app has no control that deletes an accession. A record stays in the collection once you create it, and correcting a mistake means editing the record rather than replacing it.

Record wild-collection data

The Collection tab holds the field data behind a wild-collected accession: Collector, Collector’s Number, Collection Date, Habitat, Associated Taxa, Remarks, Country, Province/State, Locality, Latitude, Longitude, Coordinate System, Uncertainty (m), Elevation (m), and Elevation Accuracy (m).

The tab is available when Provenance Type is Wild, and it stays available on any accession that already has collection data on it. On an accession with neither, the tab is disabled and reads Available when provenance is wild collected.

Add a note

Notes are free text on the record, and they are the right place for anything the form has no field for.

  1. Open the accession and select the Notes tab.
  2. Type the text in Note.
  3. Select Add note.

The note appears in the list below the form with the time it was written and the email address of whoever wrote it. Select Edit on a note to change it, or Delete to remove it. Sepal asks Delete this note? before it removes one. The three most recent notes also appear in the Notes section of the panel, where a reader who cannot open the tab can still see them.

Add a tag

A tag is a label you attach to records so that you can find them together.

  1. Open the accession and select the Tags tab.
  2. Type a name in Tag. The field suggests the tags that already exist.
  3. Select Add.

A name that matches an existing tag links that tag. A name that matches nothing creates the tag and then links it. To take one off, select the remove icon on the tag and confirm.

Once an accession is tagged, tag: filters the Accessions list by it.

tag:rescue