A herbarium is a collection of preserved plant specimens and associated data used for scientific study.
Kirstenbosch is an important botanical garden nestled at the eastern foot of Table Mountain in Cape Town. The garden is one of 10 National Botanical Gardens covering five of South Africa's six different biomes and administered by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI). Prior to 1 September 2004, the institute was known as the National Botanical Institute.
The Australian National Botanic Gardens (ANBG) is a heritage-listed botanical garden located in Acton, Canberra, in the Australian Capital Territory, Australia. Established in 1949, the Gardens is administered by the Australian Government's Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment. The botanic gardens was added to the Commonwealth Heritage List on 22 June 2004.
Meise Botanic Garden, until 2014 called the National Botanic Garden of Belgium, is a botanical garden located in the grounds of Bouchout Castle in Meise, Flemish Brabant, just north of Brussels. It is one of the world's largest botanical gardens, with an extensive collection of living plants and a herbarium of about 4 million specimens. The current garden was established in 1958 after moving from central Brussels; the former site is now the Botanical Garden of Brussels.
The individual member states of the African Union (AU) coordinate foreign policy through this agency, in addition to conducting their own international relations on a state-by-state basis. The AU represents the interests of African peoples at large in intergovernmental organizations (IGO's); for instance, it is a permanent observer at the United Nations' General Assembly.
Plant collecting is the acquisition of plant specimens for the purposes of research, cultivation, or as a hobby. Plant specimens may be kept alive, but are more commonly dried and pressed to preserve the quality of the specimen. Plant collecting is an ancient practice with records of a Chinese botanist collecting roses over 5000 years ago.
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 United States National Herbarium is a collection of five million preserved plant specimens housed in the Department of Botany at the National Museum of Natural History, which is part of the Smithsonian Institution. It represents about 8% of the plant collection resources of the United States and is one of the ten largest herbaria in the world.
Tourism is an important economic sector for many countries in Africa. There are many countries that benefit heavily from tourism like Kenya, Uganda, Algeria, Egypt, South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia, Ghana and Tanzania. The touristic particularity of Africa lies in the wide variety of points of interest, diversity and multitudes of landscapes as well as the rich cultural heritage. Also, an ecotourist industry is present in some African countries.
The Index Herbariorum provides a global directory of herbaria and their associated staff. This searchable online index allows scientists rapid access to data related to 3,400 locations where a total of 350 million botanical specimens are permanently housed. The Index Herbariorum has its own staff and website. Over time, six editions of the Index were published from 1952 to 1974. The Index became available on-line in 1997.
The Kew Herbarium is one of the world's largest and most historically significant herbaria, housed at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in London, England. Established in the 1850s on the ground floor of Hunter House, it has grown to maintain approximately seven million preserved plant specimens, including 330,000 type specimens. The herbarium's collections, which include specimens dating back to 1700, represent about 95% of known vascular plant genera and 60% of described fungi, with specimens collected over 260 years of botanical exploration. The herbarium processes around 5,000 specimen loans annually and hosts approximately 3,000 visitor-days of research visits each year, supporting a wide range of botanical research.
The National Herbarium of New South Wales was established in 1853. The Herbarium has a collection of more than 1.4 million plant specimens, making it the second largest collection of pressed, dried plant specimens in Australia, including scientific and historically significant collections and samples of Australian flora gathered by Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander during the voyage of HMS Endeavour in 1770.
The conservation and restoration of herbaria includes the preventive care, repair, and restoration of herbarium specimens. Collections of dried plant specimens are collected from their native habitats, identified by experts, pressed, and mounted onto archival paper. Care is taken to make sure major morphological characteristics are visible. Herbaria documentation provides a record of botanical diversity.
Fielding-Druce Herbarium, part of the Department of Biology, University of Oxford, located on South Parks Road, in Oxford, England. A herbarium is a collection of herbarium sheets, with a dried pressed specimen of the botanic species, whether they were bound into a book by one dedicated individual, or have been amassed into huge collections. They are like plant ID cards. As paper was expensive, multiple specimens are normally mounted on one sheet. The 2 cores of the Herbarium collection, are bequeathed to the University from Henry Fielding (1805-1851) containing a non-British and Irish collection. It also covers most taxonomic groups and geographical areas. It is particularly rich in nineteenth century material from the Americas and south and south east Asia. The other core a British and Irish collection from George Claridge Druce (1850-1932) in 1932, this is particularly rich in specimens from Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire. Other collections were added later.
The Australasian Virtual Herbarium (AVH) is an online resource that allows access to plant specimen data held by various Australian and New Zealand herbaria. It is part of the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA), and was formed by the amalgamation of Australia's Virtual Herbarium and NZ Virtual Herbarium. As of 12 August 2014, more than five million specimens of the 8 million and upwards specimens available from participating institutions have been databased.
Patricia May Holmgren is an American botanist. Holmgren's main botanical interests are the flora of the U.S. intermountain west and the genera Tiarella and Thlaspi. Holmgren was the director of the herbarium at the New York Botanical Garden from 1981–2000, and editor of Index Herbariorum from 1974–2008.
Madame Jeanne M. Borle was a Swiss missionary and collector of botanicals. Born in Saint-Imier, Bernese Jura, Switzerland with the maiden name Mühlemann, she married the missionary physician Dr. James Borle. Along with other Swiss missionaries that were heading to South Africa at the time, the Borles travelled to Elim, Western Cape to assist in the running of a hospital there. After her husband’s death in 1918 during the global influenza pandemic, she worked at the American Methodist Mission in Mozambique, and lived in the Polana district of Maputo.
Exsiccata is a work with "published, uniform, numbered set[s] of preserved specimens distributed with printed labels". Typically, exsiccatae are 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 information on each single numbered exsiccatal unit. Extensions of the concept occur.
IndExs – Index of Exsiccatae is an online biological database that plays a pivotal role in documenting more than 2,300 historical and ongoing series of exsiccatae and exsiccata-like works. Managed by the Botanische Staatssammlung München in München, IndExs serves as a comprehensive data repository for these series, providing detailed titles with information on the more than 1,300 editors, bibliographic information, exsiccatal numbers, publication timespans, ranges, information on preceding and superseding series and publishers. Exsiccatae, organised series of biological specimens distributed among biological collections, are essential resources found in major herbaria worldwide. Open access to the general information on exsiccatae facilitates global scientific engagement and research.
The Linnaean Herbarium is a historically significant collection of over 13,000 dried plant and lichen specimens assembled by the Swedish taxonomist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778). Housed at the Linnean Society of London since 1828, it forms the foundation of modern botanical nomenclature and serves as the primary reference for Linnaeus's 1753 work Species Plantarum, the starting point for modern plant taxonomy. The herbarium includes specimens from Linnaeus's botanical explorations and global collaborations, spanning early Swedish collections to acquisitions from the Americas, Asia, and Africa.
