`search_plants`

Pack: powo · Endpoint: https://gateway.pipeworx.io/powo/mcp

Search POWO (Plants of the World Online, by Kew) — the authoritative global plant taxonomy database — for accepted plant names and synonyms by scientific or common name. Returns matching taxa with their family, rank, whether the name is accepted, and a POWO fqId you can pass to get_taxon. Keyless. Complements GBIF/iNaturalist with curated botanical taxonomy.

Parameters

Name	Type	Required	Description
`query`	string	yes	Scientific or common plant name, e.g. “Quercus robur” or “English oak”.
`limit`	number	no	Max results to return (default 15).

Example call

Arguments

{
  "query": "Quercus robur"
}

curl

curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/powo/mcp \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"search_plants","arguments":{"query":"Quercus robur"}}}'

TypeScript (@pipeworx/sdk)

import { Pipeworx } from '@pipeworx/sdk';
const pipeworx = new Pipeworx();

const result = await pipeworx.call('search_plants', {
  "query": "Quercus robur"
});

More examples

{
  "query": "English oak",
  "limit": 10
}

Connect

Add this to your MCP client config, or use one-click install buttons:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "powo": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/powo/mcp"
    }
  }
}

See Getting Started for client-specific install steps.

search_plants