United States National Herbarium

Last updated

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. [1]

The herbarium was founded in 1848, when the first collections were accessioned from the United States Exploring Expedition, when botanists pressed approximately 50,000 specimens, representing 10,000 species of plants. [2] The Index Herbariorum code assigned to this herbarium is US [3] and this abbreviation is used when citing housed specimens.

Related Research Articles

Missouri Botanical Garden United States historic place

The Missouri Botanical Garden is a botanical garden located at 4344 Shaw Boulevard in St. Louis, Missouri. It is also known informally as Shaw's Garden for founder and philanthropist Henry Shaw. Its herbarium, with more than 6.6 million specimens, is the second largest in North America, behind that of the New York Botanical Garden. The Index Herbariorum code assigned to the herbarium is MO and it is used when citing housed specimens.

Herbarium Scientific collection of dried plants

A herbarium is a collection of preserved plant specimens and associated data used for scientific study.

Bishop Museum Museum of history and science in Hawaii, United States

The Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, designated the Hawaiʻi State Museum of Natural and Cultural History, is a museum of history and science in the historic Kalihi district of Honolulu on the Hawaiian island of Oʻahu. Founded in 1889, it is the largest museum in Hawaiʻi and has the world's largest collection of Polynesian cultural artifacts and natural history specimens. Besides the comprehensive exhibits of Hawaiiana, the museum's total holding of natural history specimens exceeds 24 million, of which the entomological collection alone represents more than 13.5 million specimens. The Index Herbariorum code assigned to Herbarium Pacificum of this museum is BISH and this abbreviation is used when citing housed herbarium specimens.

Australian National Botanic Gardens Botanical garden in Acton, Canberra

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 the Environment and Energy. The botanic gardens was added to the Commonwealth Heritage List on 22 June 2004.

Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh Botanical garden in Edinburgh, Scotland

The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) is a scientific centre for the study of plants, their diversity and conservation, as well as a popular tourist attraction. Founded in 1670 as a physic garden to grow medicinal plants, today it occupies four sites across Scotland—Edinburgh, Dawyck, Logan and Benmore—each with its own specialist collection. The RBGE's living collection consists of more than 13,302 plant species, whilst the herbarium contains in excess of 3 million preserved specimens.

Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria Botanic gardens at Melbourne and Cranbourne

Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria are botanic gardens across two sites–Melbourne and Cranbourne.

Arnold Arboretum Botanical garden in Boston, Massachusetts

The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University is a botanical research institution and free public park, located in the Jamaica Plain and Roslindale neighborhoods of Boston, Massachusetts. Established in 1872, it is the oldest public arboretum in North America. The landscape was designed by Charles Sprague Sargent and Frederick Law Olmsted and is the second largest "link" in the Emerald Necklace. The Arnold Arboretum's collection of temperate trees, shrubs, and vines has a particular emphasis on the plants of the eastern United States and eastern Asia, where arboretum staff and colleagues are actively sourcing new material on plant collecting expeditions. The arboretum supports research in its landscape and in its Weld Hill Research Building.

Meise Botanic Garden

The Meise Botanic Garden is located in the grounds of Bouchout Castle in the town of Meise, just north of Brussels, in the province of Flemish Brabant. It is one of the largest botanical gardens in the world with an extensive collection of living plants in addition to a herbarium of over 3 million specimens. The current garden was established in 1958 after it moved from the centre of Brussels; the former site is now the Botanical Garden of Brussels. Researchers at the garden conduct research particularly on Belgian and African plants.

Queensland Herbarium

The Queensland Herbarium is situated at the Brisbane Botanic Gardens, Mount Coot-tha, in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It is part of Queensland's Department of Environment and Science. It is responsible for discovering, describing, monitoring, modelling, surveying, naming and classifying Queensland's plants, and is the focus for information and research on the state's plants and plant communities.

National Herbarium of Victoria Australian herbaria and scientific institution in Victoria

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 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 located on the ground floor of the Valley Life Sciences Building on the main campus of the university in Berkeley, California. There are a number of ancillary collections such as the Marine Algal Collection, Fruit & Cone Collection, Horticultural Herbarium and Spirit Collection. The herbaria hold many type specimens with a particular strength in 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.

Scientific collection

A scientific collection is a collection of items that are preserved, catalogued, and managed for the purpose of scientific study.

Charlotte Cortlandt Ellis was an American amateur plant collector active in New Mexico. She discovered several plant taxa and collected some 500 plant specimens.

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.

Vermilacinia rosei is a fruticose lichen known from two islands off the Pacific Coast of central Baja California, San Roque Island and Cedros Island. The epithet, rosei, is in honor of Joseph Nelson Rose who collected the lichen on San Roque Island, 15 March 1911, during the Albatross Expedition. His lichen specimens had been kept separate from the mounted and filed lichen collections in the herbarium at the Smithsonian Institution, Department of Botany, US) loose in brown standard herbarium paper, and were made available to Richard Spjut sometime after 1986 while he was undertaking a revision of the genus Niebla. The epithet was proposed by Albert William Herre who considered the lichen to be a new species but did not describe the species or publish the name. .

Conservatory and Botanical Garden of the City of Geneva Botanical garden in Switzerland

The Conservatory and Botanical Garden of the city of Geneva is a museum and an institution of the City of Geneva.

National Herbarium of New South Wales

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 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 Kern Holmgren American botanist

Patricia 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.

References

  1. "Overview of US Herbarium". Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 21 September 2013.
  2. "The US National Herbarium" (PDF). US Government Printing Office. Retrieved 21 September 2013.
  3. "Index Herbariorum". Steere Herbarium, New York Botanical Garden. Retrieved 25 November 2021.