A herbarium is a collection of preserved plant specimens and associated data used for scientific study.
In botany, a virtual herbarium is a herbarium in a digitized form. That is, it concerns a collection of digital images of preserved plants or plant parts. Virtual herbaria often are established to improve availability of specimens to a wider audience. However, there are digital herbaria that are not suitable for internet access because of the high resolution of scans and resulting large file sizes. Additional information about each specimen, such as the location, the collector, and the botanical name are attached to every specimen. Frequently, further details such as related species and growth requirements are mentioned.
Joseph Charles Arthur was a pioneer American plant pathologist and mycologist best known for his work with the parasitic rust fungi (Pucciniales). He was a charter member of the Botanical Society of America, the Mycological Society of America, and the American Phytopathological Society. He was an elected member of both the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was a recipient of the first Doctorate in Sciences awarded by Cornell University. The standard author abbreviation Arthur is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
Robert Wight MD FRS FLS was a Scottish surgeon in the East India Company, whose professional career was spent entirely in southern India, where his greatest achievements were in botany – as an economic botanist and leading taxonomist in south India. He contributed to the introduction of American cotton. As a taxonomist he described 110 new genera and 1267 new species of flowering plants. He employed Indian botanical artists to illustrate many plants collected by himself and Indian collectors he trained. Some of these illustrations were published by William Hooker in Britain, but from 1838 he published a series of illustrated works in Madras including the uncoloured, six-volume Icones Plantarum Indiae Orientalis (1838–53) and two hand-coloured, two-volume works, the Illustrations of Indian Botany (1838–50) and Spicilegium Neilgherrense (1845–51). By the time he retired from India in 1853 he had published 2464 illustrations of Indian plants. The standard author abbreviation Wight is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid is an 8 hectares botanical garden in Madrid (Spain). The public entrance is located at Plaza de Murillo, next to the Prado Museum.
Ethelbert Blatter SJ was a Swiss Jesuit priest and pioneering botanist in British India. Author of five books and over sixty papers on the flora of the Indian subcontinent, he was Principal and Professor of Botany at St Xavier College, Bombay and Vice-President of the Bombay Natural History Society. In 1932, he became the first recipient of the Johannes Bruehl Memorial Medal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.
The National Herbarium of Victoria is one of Australia's earliest herbaria and the oldest scientific institution in Victoria. Its 1.5 million specimens of preserved plants, fungi and algae—collectively known as the State Botanical Collection of Victoria—comprise the largest herbarium collection in Australia and Oceania.
The Bolus Herbarium was established in 1865 from a donation by Harry Bolus of his extensive herbarium and library to the South African College, which later became the University of Cape Town.
Isaac Henry Burkill was an English botanist who worked in India and in the Straits Settlements. He worked primarily in economic botany but published extensively on plant biology, ethno-botany, insect-plant interactions and described several species. He published a two volume compilation on the plants of economic importance in the Malay Peninsula, collating local names and knowledge. He also wrote a detailed history of botany in India. The plant genera Burkillia and Burkillianthus were named in his honour.
The University and Jepson Herbaria are two herbaria that share a joint facility at the University of California, Berkeley holding over 2,200,000 botanical specimens, the largest such collection on the US West Coast. These botanical natural history museums are on the ground floor of the Valley Life Sciences Building on the main campus of the university in Berkeley, California. There are ancillary collections such as the Marine Algal Collection, Fruit & Cone Collection, Horticultural Herbarium and Spirit Collection. The herbaria hold many type specimens, especially of Western North American and Pacific Rim plants. Holotypes are maintained separately for both herbaria. The Charterhouse School Herbarium is housed separately within the University Herbarium. The Herbaria have an open house every year on Cal Day with a range of activities for children and adults, and the Jepson Herbarium runs a series of workshops and public programs focusing on botanical education and the flora of California throughout the year.
The University of Michigan Herbarium is the herbarium of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in the United States. One of the most-extensive botanical collections in the world, the herbarium has some 1.7 million specimens of vascular plants, algae, bryophytes, fungi, and lichens, and is a valuable resource for teaching and research in biology and botany. The herbarium includes many rare and extinct species.
Caroline Priscilla Bingham was an American botanist who was one of the earliest American women to publish scientific papers on botany. She was an influential collector of botanical specimens discovering a new genus and several new species. As a result of her discoveries Bingham had a genus and several algae species named in her honor.
Hermenegild Santapau (1903-1970) was a Spanish born naturalized Indian Jesuit priest and botanist, known for his taxonomical research on Indian flora. He was credited with the Latin nomenclature of several Indian plant species. A recipient of the Order of Alphonsus X the Wise and the Birbal Sahni Medal, he was honoured by the Government of India in 1967, with the award of Padma Shri, the fourth highest Indian civilian award for his contributions to the society.
William Campbell Steere (1907–1989) was an American botanist known as an expert on bryophytes, especially arctic and tropical American species. The standard author abbreviation Steere is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
Inez Maria Haring was an American botanist and plant collector, best known for her work in bryology as the Assistant Honorary Curator of Mosses at the New York Botanical Garden beginning in 1945.
Jayakrishna Indraji was an Indian botanist and ethno-botanist from the Princely state of Porbander who wrote the first botanical treatise following Hooker's classification in an Indian regional language (Gujarati) - Vanaspati Shastra (1910). He also wrote and illustrated the book Plants of Cutch and their utility (1926) and contributed to the works of Rustomjee Khory where he is not acknowledged and to the works of K.R. Kirtikar, an army doctor and botanist in Bombay. He was employed by the King of Porbander State in Kutch as a Curator of Forests and Gardens from 1886 during which time he was involved in the introduction and planting of many species of plants of economic and medicinal value.
Lieutenant-Colonel Kanhoba Ranchoddas Kirtikar FLS IMS was an army surgeon in British India and an amateur botanist. An early Indian member of the Bombay Natural History Society he had a special interest in medicinal plants, he published many papers on botany and a major work on Indian medicinal plants was posthumously published by his colleague Major B.D. Basu. He illustrated many of the plates in the book. He also wrote many books on Medical sciences in English and Marathi. Besides being a surgeon and botanist, he wrote Marathi poetry and held strong conservative Hindu views.
The University of Melbourne Herbarium is a teaching and research herbarium within the School of Biosciences, University of Melbourne in Parkville, Victoria, Australia. Its Index Herbariorum code is MELU.
Exsiccata is a work with "published, uniform, numbered set[s] of preserved specimens distributed with printed labels". Typically, exsiccatae refer to numbered collections of dried herbarium specimens or preserved biological samples published in several duplicate sets with a common theme or title, such as Lichenes Helvetici. Exsiccatae are regarded as scientific contributions of the editor(s) with characteristics from the library world and features from the herbarium world. Exsiccatae works represent a special method of scholarly communication. The text in the printed matters/published booklets is basically a list of labels (schedae) with informations on each single numbered exsiccatal unit. Extensions of the concept occur.
The National Herbarium of Ukraine is a repository of plant specimens, in Kyiv, Ukraine. It was established in 1921 by Professor O. Fomin, who was its first Curator. It is now part of the M.G. Kholodny Institute of Botany, at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine.
