A PDF version of this help is available here

Exact and Matching keywords
Sometimes users may wish to search for words that match partially to a record, or a word that matches exactly as specified. For partial matches:
If you wish to find all records that have the words whole flower, it may return records with whole flower from sideand whole flower, upper side even flower records with attributes where the whole is in a different attribute and the flower word exists in a different field in the same flower record. For this type of result, simply type the word as is in the search:
whole flower
However, if you wish to return records with only the exact words that are in a single attribute, you should put these words in quotes as follows:
"whole flower"

Excluding keywords
If you choose to exclude keywords from your search, you will ensure they do not occur in any part of the attributes of the records retrieved. To exclude any keyword from a search, insert the "-" symbol in front of the keyword. For example, if you want to return all results with the exception of the colour blue, add the symbol in front of the keyword you wish to exclude:
-blue
This would exclude all records with the keyword blue; again, this includes both complete and partial occurences of this search term. To ensure only the exact word blue is excluded, we should put it in quotes and add the exclusion symbol to it:
-"blue"

Alternative optional keywords
Sometimes, you may wish to search for alternative words alongside other words: a search that says "search for A or B" where A, B are the keywords. If A does not exist and B does, at least B will be returned. If B does not exist and A does, at least A will be returned. If both exist, both will be returned. This means that both A and B do not have to be keywords in the same record at the same time. Such a search increases the number of records returned. For example, if you wish to find records with either the keyword Anchusa or the keyword Trifolium:
Anchusa or Trifolium

Again, this would return any record with keywords that are a combination matching the keyword Anchusa or matching Trifolium. To ensure the matching is exact, we would enclose the keywords in quotes:
"Anchusa" or "Trifolium"

Summary of formulating search queries
You can combine your search expressions with others to generate relatively large, complex queries. Some examples of these are shown below, making use of the search notations described above:
-Asteraceae blue or -"whole flower from side" -purple or green "whole flower"

Wherever you place the or, you are providing alternatives of both A and B. In this case the alternative is any of the following queries that satisfy:
-Asteraceae blue
-"whole flower from side" -purple
green "whole flower"

Using the HexSearch
The HexSearch function allows you to search for all records whose colour hexagon coordinates fall within a given area. To set the area, select a point from the list (it is possible to search up to 10 areas simultaneously, or search just one area by selecting only point 1), specify the search radius (in colour hexagon units, so a radius of 1 will search the entire hexagon, whilst a radius of 0.05 will search a very small range), and then click "Search Now".

To search again, return to the HexSearch form and clear previous search information by clicking "Clear All". This ensures that only records from the new search are returned.