Find out about Herbarium, Seed Banks and Fungarium
​in botanic gardens, mueums and botanical and horticultural societies around the world

What is a Herbarium?
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A Herbarium is a place where collections of dried plant specimens and pressed and plant material are preserved and stored for use research purposes by botanists and scientists.

Present day herbaria include more than just herbarium specimens. Herbarium specimens may also include
  • pressed and mounted plants,
  • plant parts (seeds, wood sections, pollen),
  • microscope slides,
  • plant DNA, and
  • objects made from plants - including economic botany items
Records of reference material can also include
  • drawings and paintings,
  • prints, slides and digital photographs.

A variation on a Herbarium is a Fungarium - which houses fungi specimens. 

Whether you use Herbariums or Herbaria for the plural probably depends on how much Latin you know and whether you think it's important - I've decided to use both!

Reference:
Wikipedia - Herbarium

Herbaria around the World
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The aim of this page is to develop a list of herbariums / herbaria which are accessible by botanical artists.

Below you will find a list of some of the key collections in Herbarium, Seed Banks and Fungarium in the UK and some of the USA, Europe and Australia

As the list develops and grows I'll split country data off into separate pages - which will be accessible from this page - so please make a bookmark! 

​Also listed are the names of botanical artists who regularly work from herbarium specimens. This list will grow over time.

At the end I've included a list of Virtual Herbariums - which are accessible no matter where you are located in the world.  The advantage of the virtual herbarium is they provide large scale magnified images of plant material.

PLEASE CONTACT ME with suggestions for more Herbariums and Seed Banks that are accessible to botanical artists
Banner Image: Inside the Old Herbarium Building at Kew - where lighting used to be by gas lamps!
Matthew C. Pace, assistant curator at the Steere Herbarium at The New York Botanical Garden, explains what you need to know about herbariums.
GO TO: Basic Plant Collecting and Pressing for a series of videos outlining how you too can start your very own a Herbarium!
The Herbarium Handbook
Paperback: 348 pages
Publisher: Royal Botanic Gardens Kew; Third Edition, edition (5 Sept. 2000)

This is the commonly recognised standard reference manual for how to create herbarium specimens from plant material.

BUY THIS BOOK
Herbarium Handbook 3rd Edition - from Amazon.co.uk
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The Herbarium Handbook

Botanical artists working with plant material
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Other artists working with plant material
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Lucy T. Smith is an Australian botanical artist (and winner of the Margaret Flockton Award 2014) based in the UK. She works on commissions for the scientists at Kew Gardens and regularly draws from the plant material kept in the Herbarium.

Rachel Pedder Smith is also a botanical artist who works for Kew. You may have seen her huge Herbarium specimen painting. You can download a key to the various seed and plant material in her huge painting. She has also produced a watercolour painting of an extensive collection of beans
Both artists also produce work for commission. (This is an article about her painting Herbarium Specimen Painting at Kew Gardens in The Telegraph)

Rosemary Wise works for Oxford University Herbaria. She produces artwork for their Tropical Forest Field Guides Project.
The At L'Herbier blog is the online journal of writer and editor Sonya Patel Ellis, founder of The Herbarium Project. 
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Lucy Smith showing members of the RBG Sydney Florilegium Society an example of the specimens stored in the Kew Herbarium
The Pressed Plant: The Art of Botanical Specimens, Nature Prints, and Sun Prints
by Andrea DiNoto and David Winter 

​This is a book which was first published in 1899. It looks at how you can create artwork by pressing and preserving plant material.
  • Part one, The Plant Collected - shows real plants that have been collected, pressed, and mounted by botanists or by amateurs, as single sheets or bound into books called herbaria.
  • Part Two, The Plant's Impression - shows / describes rare and classic examples of both nature prints, in which the plant is inked, pressed, and printed, and sun pictures, produced when a plant is placed on light-sensitive paper and exposed to the sun.
  • The final part looks at how botanical materials are used in unusual works by leading contemporary artists
  • Detailed appendices describe methods of botanical specimen collecting and mounting, materials and suppliers, and botanical institutions and museums worldwide.
Hardcover: 160 pages
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams (October 18, 1999)
BUY THIS BOOK
The Pressed Plant from Amazon.com
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Title Page for Historical Herbarium Sheets in the Natural History Museum. The facing page indicates this was originally located at the British Museum - and moved to South Kensington with the Natural History Collection after the 'new' museum was built.
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Herbarium sheet in the Natural History Museum

How to press, dry, mount and preserve plant material

After collection and pressing, the next step in preserving a specimen is to make sure that all the moisture is removed from the plant. Any moisture remaining in a collection can result in the eventual rotting of that specimen, rendering it useless for scientific purposes. In a herbarium, plants are dried in a forced-air plant drier that approaches temperatures of 100°C.
Pressing and Drying | Plant Collecting: How-To | The Botanical Research Institute of Texas
Producing dried plant material which lasts over time requires a systematic and stages approach:
  • collecting - and the equipment you need in the field
  • identification - usually done by a botanist
  • pressing - requires some expertise to produce a specimen which can be used later
  • drying - takes some time in a environmentally controlled environment
  • mounting - once dry the plant material needs to be properly mounted with its identifying card
  • preservation & storage - requires processes which controls about what can get into a herbarium and the elimination of all pests in newly arrived material - because they eat dried plants!
Plant Collecting: How-To
The Botanical Research Institute of Texas has prouced a series of articles about the different stages of
  • Identification - Plant identification requires you have as much of the plant as possible
  • Pressing and Drying - To facilitate specimen storage and use, collected plants must be pressed to a 2-dimensional status and dried to remove any moisture that would encourage fungal growth.
  • Mounting - There is an art to the mounting of plant specimens to their archival quality cardstock backing.
  • Preservation & Storage - Herbarium specimens will last hundreds of years if properly cared for.
The best conditions for storage include low temperature (from 50–65ºF), low humidity, low light, and infrequent handling. Roaches and certain beetles will destroy plant specimens. You can kill insects in dried plant specimens by freezing them for three or four days, and keep them pest-free in a tightly-sealed plastic bag.
Preservation & Storage | Plant Collecting: How-To | The Botanical Research Institute of Texas
RBGE Herbarium: Basic Plant Collecting and Pressing: Filmed at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, this video provides a thorough introduction to collecting and pressing plants to make herbarium specimens.
The Microfleur Microwave Flower Press
A recommendation too good not to pass on!

Average Customer Rating for out of 5 stars (for 9 inch press):
  • UK: 4.6 based on 195 customer ratings
  • USA: 4.7 based on 197 customer ratings

This was recommended to me by somebody who did a lot of flower pressing. The main advantage is that
  • Holes in the top and bottom platens allow for steam to escape and to allow flowers to press with the best possible uniformity.
  • this method apparently preserves the colour of the flowers much better. 
  • it comes in two sizes 5 inch (pictured) and 9 inch
  • the nine inch weighs 885 g and measures 22.9 x 22.9 x 2.5 cm. 
  • There's also a book of instructions - and refill packs for the materials used for pressing.
  • you can get replacement accesories from the main website

BUY THIS FLOWER PRESS (two sizes 5" and 9" available)
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The smaller 5 inch size
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Microfleur 9" Microwave Max Flower Press

Herbarium Mounting Techniques

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Mounting specimens for storage in the Kew Herbarium from parcels received from collectors in the field. Newspaper is a readily available material world which helps to dry a plant specimen when it goes into the plant press in the field.
Filmed in the Herbarium of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, this video provides an introduction and practical guide to the art of mounting pressed, dried plant specimens for scientific study.
Covers how to attach plants to a mounting card and a simple collection storage option. (Suitable for children)
Display of different Mounting Techniques in the Herbarium at Kew Gardens
Display of different Mounting Techniques in the Herbarium at Kew Gardens

Herbariums, Fungariums and Seed Banks - in the UK
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Herbaria are one of the most fantastic botanical resources I know. And one of the most under-used and under-appreciated.
Chris Metherell, BSBI President 2017-9

Botanic Gardens in the UK - England
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The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
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The Kew Gardens Herbarium has more than 7 million specimens collected from all over the world which represent nearly 98 per cent of all of the genera in the world. The oldest specimen dates back to 1696. 
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Besides being a basis for research, the herbarium also provides the raw pressed plant material for scientific botanical illustrations.​

The first video (below) explains the history of the Herbarium at Kew Gardens. Originally named Hunter House, the 18th century building was occupied by the King of Hanover until his death in 1851. 
This next video provides you with a tour of the Kew Herbarium.
The next video (below) explains the purpose of a Herbarium.  The Kew Herbarium concentrates on the floristics of non-temperate parts of the world, British and world non-lichenized fungi, grasses and orchids

Storage of Seeds and Fungi
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The Millennium Seed Bank Library at Wakehurst Place in Sussex ("Kew in the country") stores material on seeds, plant physiology, seed storage and seed germination. The work of this seed back involves collboration with various Botanic Gardens all over the world.
The Fungarium at Kew was founded in 1879 provides access to an estimated 1.25 million specimens of dried fungi
The video below explains how Kew produces Seed Guides for different species in different parts of the world using the informstion from specimens housed in the Kew Herbarium.

Botanic Gardens in the UK - Scotland
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The Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh

Herbarium in UK Universities
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Cambridge University
  • Cambridge University Herbarium (new website coming soon) - Established in 1761, it houses over 1 million pressed, dried and mounted plants. These date back to 1703. Access is available for those who have a research purpose.  The Herbarium also makes special collections available online. These are Darwin's Beagle Plants - the photographic records online appear to be excellent.  The herbarium also has a unique collection of taxonomic books and floras. The Cambridge University Herbarium (CGE) and Cory and Herbarium Libraries are both located within the Sainsbury Laboratory building within the Cambridge University Botanic Garden. The Libraries house a significant collection including:
    • ​Horticultural reference works, including practical horticulture,
    • Floras by geographical area,
    • Works on taxonomy and systematics, including nineteenth century works,
    • Serials related to taxonomy and horticulture,
    • The Cory collection of early botanical and horticultural works,
    • The Simpson Collection of UK floras.
Oxford University

Herbaria of Botanical and Horticultural Societies in the UK
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The Linnean Society
  • The Linnean Herbarium - kept by the Linnean Society - has c. 14,300 specimens of which 4,000+ specimens are type specimens for Linnaean names
  • Herbaria United is a special project of the Botanical Collection Managers Group (BCMG), a specialist group of the Linnean Society of London. The aim is to provide one bookmark for access to all the collections which are available online
Royal Horticultural Society (Ornamental Plants)
The RHS Herbarium holds the UK’s largest collection of cultivated plants, with more than 86,000 dried plant specimens.

Herbarium in UK Museums
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Natural History Museum
The Natural History Museum concentrates on the flora of Europe (including the UK), Central and North America, together with British and world lichenized fungi, algae, mosses and liverworts.  

The British and Irish Herbarium is one of the most comprehensive collections of plants from a particular area anywhere in the world.

The Natural History Museum has a range of botanical collections in their Herbarium.  ​These include:
Herbarium - British Antarctic Survey
​The plant collections held in the British Antarctic Survey’s herbarium (international code AAS) consist of over 40,000 plant specimens from Antarctica, the sub-Antarctic Islands and surrounding continents (especially Fuegia and Patagonia). Over 2000 species are represented, comprising predominantly mosses, liverworts and lichens with smaller collections of vascular plants, macro-algae and macro-fungi.
[Note: British Antarctic Survey (BAS) is a component of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).]

Herbarium in Europe
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Germany
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 Berlin - Herbarium of the Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem 
  • Founded in 1819, this houses 3.6 million dried and preserved plants and is the largest herbarium in Germany. 

Netherlands
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The National Herbarium of the Netherlands (NHN)
  • This is the Department of Botany of Naturalis Biodiversity Center. The botanical collections of Naturalis consist of the herbaria from Leiden, Utrecht, and Wageningen universities. The focal areas are Southeast Asia, tropical America, tropical Africa and the Netherlands.

Scandinavia
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List of Nordic Herbaria 
  • in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden

The Finnish Museum of Natural History, University of Helsinki 
  • c.3.3 million herbarium specimens of plants and fungi which comprise the national herbarium of Finland

Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo

Herbarium in the USA
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Herbarium in Botanical Gardens in the USA​
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Chicago Botanical Garden
  • The Nancy Poole Rich Herbarium - Home to nearly 20,000 specimens, but is continually growing. Includes flora of Cook County, Illinois; flora of the tallgrass prairie; plant exploration trips in Asia; and horticultural and native plants in the Garden's living collections
Denver Botanical Gardens
A time lapse video of what it takes to create new and storage meeting contemporary standards for a herbarium
​With support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the herbaria received new storage that will allow for 20 years of plant and fungal collection growth. The Sam Mitchel Herbarium of Fungi is the most active and largest macrofungal herbarium in Colorado.
New York Botanical Gardens
  • The C. V. Starr Virtual Herbarium - an electronic gateway to the collections of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium (c. 7.3 million plant and fungi specimens). The project to digitise the collection currently comprises c. 1.3 million herbarium specimens and 225,000 high-resolution specimen images.
Barbara Thiers, Ph.D., Director of the The William and Lynda Steere Herbarium at the New York Botanical Garden, reveals the inner workings of this unique collection of over 7 million dried plant specimens.

Herbarium in Universities in the USA
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Harvard University
  • Harvard University Herbaria - Home - The Harvard University Herbaria, with more than 5 million specimens, is one of the 10 largest Herbaria in the world in number of specimens, and along with the library, form the world's largest university owned herbarium and the 3rd largest herbaria in the USA.
  • The Glass Flowers | Harvard University Herbaria - The Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants, popularly known as the Glass Flowers - commissioned in 1886 to aid in teaching and serve as the premier botany exhibit. 847 life-size models representing 780 species and varieties of plants in 164 families as well as over 3,000 models of enlarged parts.
Harvard University Herbaria
Front facade of Harvard University Herbaria building, 22 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
REFERENCE:
Glass model of a cashew twig Glass model of a twig of the Cashew, at the Harvard Museum of Natural History
Glass model of a twig of the Cashew, at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, by L & R Blaschka
Emery University, Atlanta, Georgia
  • Emory University Herbarium - home to more than 21,000 plant specimens, dating back to the late 1800s. The majority of comprise plants from the southeast USA. Some 20,000 specimens have been digitized.
University of Michigan

Herbarium and collaborating institutions in the USA
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California
South East USA
  • SERNEC (SouthEast Regional Network of Expertise and Collections) is a consortium of 233 herbaria in 14 states in the Southeast USA - spanning 150 years of botanical data. The aim is to provide herbarium specimen images and metadata from one of the most botanically diverse regions of the earth with the goal of facilitating better research, better management planning and a more well-informed public. Contains access to digital records of State Floras

Herbarium in Australia
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Queensland

University of Melbourne Herbarium (MELU)

Virtual Herbarium
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UK USA
  • The C. V. Starr Virtual Herbarium - the gateway to the digitized specimens of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium. Currently, 3 million specimen records and 2 million images are available. ​

​EUROPE
ASIA
​AUSTRALIA
  • Australian Virtual Herbarium - The AVH provides access to collections held in Australian herbaria which, between them, house over seven million plant, algae and fungi specimens.