The NHA herbarium comprises approximately 200,000 specimens (120,000 vascular plants, 80,000 marine algae, and 550 bryophytes and lichens). The collection contains a combination of historic and recently collected specimens, including 97 nomenclatural type specimens and voucher specimens supporting taxonomic, ecological, and biogeographic research. While our specimens represent plant species worldwide, the collections emphasize northeastern North America and are especially strong in representing freshwater and marine habitats. An additional strength is our extensive collection of Neotropical aquatic species.

This dataset contains only specimens collected in the following regions (if they exist in this collection):

Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, China, Cyprus, Georgia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Macau, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar (Burma), Nepal, North Korea, Pakistan, Oman, Qatar, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Russia, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Solomon Islands, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan (Republic of China), Tajikistan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Yemen

The Brown University Herbarium was founded in 1869 when the University acquired the collections of the Providence Franklin Society and Stephen Thayer Olney. The collection includes around 100,000 plant specimens and is an important depository of Rhode Island and New England collections. It is also rich in western and southern North American plants and includes special sets of historically valuable specimens from 19th and early 20th century western US expeditions. Among other important collections, the herbarium also includes a full set of Charles Wright’s Cuban plants (1856-1867) and a unique and classic collection of Carex. Click here to download a pdf brochure describing the herbarium.

The combined Herbarium of California Botanic Garden (RSA) and Pomona College (POM) is a museum-quality collection of vascular plant and bryophyte specimens. With current holdings totaling over 1,250,000 specimens, the Herbarium is the third largest in California. The Herbarium is recognized throughout the world for its strength in documenting the diversity, distribution, variation, and ecology of more than 6,500 species of flowering plants, conifers, and ferns in California, which constitutes nearly 50% of the total collection. The holdings from Southern California exceed 250,000 and are unsurpassed by any other herbarium. Approximately 95% of the collection is composed of mounted sheets and filed according to a standardized system of classification. Ancillary collections that augment the collection include a cone & fruit collection, wood collection, fluid preserved collection, and pollen and anatomy slide collection.

This dataset consists of all digitized specimens collected in Asian and Middle-Eastern countries currently housed in the Chicago Botanic Garden (as of last dataset shared with the Midwest Consortium in 2020).

The herbarium of the Cincinnati Museum Center (CMNH) houses ca. 500 specimens, mostly from a 1990s expedition to the Philippines.

The Harvard University Herbaria, with over 5 million specimens, is the world’s largest University Herbaria. Included in the Herbaria are what were once six separate herbarium collections: * Herbarium of the Arnold Arboretum (A) * Economic Herbarium of Oakes Ames (ECON) * Oakes Ames Orchid Herbarium (AMES) * Farlow Herbarium (FH) * Gray Herbarium (GH) * New England Botanical Club Herbarium (NEBC).

The Herbarium Pacificum (BISH) collection consists of more than 710,000 plant, algae and fungi specimens. Our emphasis is on Hawai‘i and the Pacific Basin, but we also house representative material from other world regions. The collections of Hawaiian plants form the largest and most comprehensive assemblage of such specimens in the world, with approximately 187,000 specimens.

Numerous collections of major importance to Hawaii and Pacific botany and phycology are located at BISH, including those by H. St. John, F.R. Fosberg, O. Degener, J.F. Rock, C.N. Forbes, B.C. Stone, D.R. Herbst, W.L. Wagner, D. Nelson, U.J. Faurie, G.C. Munro, H. Mann, W.T. Brigham, I.A. Abbott, and M.S. Doty. Type specimens have been imaged at high resolution and are available online via JSTOR's Global Plants and are housed in a fire-protected room.

The Missouri Botanical Garden’s Herbarium is one of the world’s outstanding research resources for specimens and information on bryophytes and vascular plants. The collection is limited to these two major groups of plants. As of 31 December 2020 the herbarium collection had 6.93 million mounted specimens (6.33 million vascular plants and 598,000 bryophytes). This specimen dataset includes over 4.7 million records (4.3 million vascular plants and 380,000 bryophytes).

The Ohio State University Herbarium (OS) is a major collection of plant and fungal specimens and is a unit of the Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology. We are part of OSU's Museum of Biological Diversity. Since its founding in 1891, the collection has grown to approximately half a million specimens and has worldwide coverage, with strengths in flora of the northeastern United States (especially Ohio) and in temperate South America. The Herbarium supports research and teaching at OSU and receives frequent use by researchers from other academic institutions, as well as by staff from governmental agencies such as the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

Public records of accessioned specimens and observations curated by the US National Herbarium (US), National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. The data include more than 110,000 type specimen records. Dataset is filtered to only include preserved specimens. 

The Herbarium (ALA) at the University of Alaska Museum is the major regional herbarium in Alaska and part of a network of similar collections with an interest in the origin and evolution of the circumpolar flora. ALA contains more than 260,000 specimens of vascular and non-vascular plants. Data for the Vascular Plant and Cryptogam collections are managed separately in Arctos. Much of our understanding of Ice Age Beringia is based on botanical specimens, the largest collection of which is housed at ALA. Our recent acquisition from Iowa State University of the J. P. Anderson Collection (32,000 specimens on permanent loan) forms a significant part of this story. This collection of arctic and boreal plants, which contains 67 nomenclatural type specimens, formed the basis for much of Anderson's seminal work, The Flora of Alaska. The botanical collection also includes plants from other states, Canada, Greenland, Fennoscandia, Japan, and Russia and provides a basis for teaching and research. Our botanical collection can be viewed and searched through the Arctos database and includes high resolution images of 163,000 herbarium sheets, online representation of 190,000 holdings, and inclusion of all holdings in an object-tracking system (barcode labeling).

The herbarium at the University of Cincinnati was founded by Margaret Fulford in 1927 and has grown over the years through the work of prolific collectors and through acquisition of several large and important collections. Today, the herbarium houses around 125,000 specimens of vascular plants, bryophytes, lichens, fungi, and algae, making it the third largest herbarium in Ohio. In addition to the large collection of regional and North American material, it also contains extensive collections from Europe, South America, the Caribbean Basin, Samoa, and China. Particular strengths of the herbarium are North American Sphagnum, South American and Caribbean Hepatics, North American Cladonia, and Trilliaceae.

The R. Dale Thomas Collection - University of Louisiana Monroe (NLU) collection was transferred to the Botanical Research Institute of Texas in 2017. Additionally in 2018-2019, more than 50,000 NLU specimens were transferred to the Shirley C. Tucker Herbarium (LSU) at Lousiana State University. Please contact Tiana Rehman (trehman@brit.org) with any questions regarding the collection.

The University of Massachusetts Herbarium, Amherst, is a regional resource with approximately 224,000 mounted vascular plants, algae and bryophtyes as well as a fruit and seed collection. The collection is world wide in scope, but the focus is on Western Massachusetts and New England. It includes three herbaria; the Amherst College Herbarium (AC), started in 1829 by Professor Edward Hitchcock and one of the oldest herbaria in the country, the Massachusetts State Herbarium (MASS) founded in 1867 by W. S. Clark, the third president of the University, and the recently acquired Phippen-LaCroix Herbarium (TUFT).

The Pringle Herbarium (VT) serves systematic and floristics research both regionally and globally, with a geographic focus on Vermont and the New World tropics. Established in 1902, the collection holds over 350,000 sheets of mounted plants and fungi. It is the third largest herbarium in New England. Other digitization projects cover type specimens, North American bryophytes and lichens, macroalgae and macrofungi. These images and data are available through various other portals. The herbarium does not maintain its own online database.