David Hosack's Elgin Botanic Garden
Elgin Botanic Garden was the first public botanical garden in the United…
Otto Kuntze
Carl Ernst Otto Kuntze was a german botanist who made expeditions to every…
The Brittons: Partners in Life and Botany
The establishment of The New York Botanical Garden was the result of…
Ancient plant DNA
Using a NYBG herbarium specimen, PhD grad student Lizzie Joyce turned back…
John Torrey on Gray's Peak
In 1861 Charles Parry was the first explorer to ascend Gray's Peak…
Springtime with Peter Zika
If seasonal allergies or the depths of winter have got you down,…
John Torrey
John Torrey (1796-1873) is considered one of the most influential American botanists…
J. K. Small's exploration in Southern Florida, 1915
John Kunkel Small, botanist and herbarium curator at the the New York Botanical…
John Kunkel Small
John Kunkel Small (1869-1938) was a taxonomist and botanical explorer, who specialized…
Carnivorous plants
Cabinet of CuriositiesFocus on Science
Watch out, these plants are hungry! Most carnivorous plants grow in bogs…
Fetid Flowers
With names like Stinking Benjamin, Corpse Flower, and Skunk Cabbage; these flowers…
4 Millionth Specimen
With 7,800,000 specimens in our herbarium, reaching 4,000,000 specimens catalogued in our…
Daffodils are blooming!
It's springtime and the daffodils are blooming outside! In the herbarium, these…
Most Vibrant
Cabinet of CuriositiesWorks of Art
If we were to give yearbook superlatives to herbarium specimens, these would…
Old Man's Beard
This lichen grows as an epiphyte on trees. They require clean air,…
Discovering a Darwin Collection
Cabinet of CuriositiesSpecimen Stories
In the museum world, there's a sort of joke that you never…
The Lilac Collection
The lilacs are blooming here at the Garden, gracing us with their…
NY's Missing Species
When you think of a rare, endangered species, you may think of far-off…
Don't touch
Plants have evolved many ways to protect themselves, from growing barbs that…
Chock-full of chromosomes
Cabinet of CuriositiesFocus on Science
Behold this fern which has the highest recorded chromosome number of any living…
Astragalus osterhoutii, Osterhout milkvetch
Astragalus osterhoutii M. E. Jones (or Osterhout milkvetch) is an herbaceous plant known…
Elizabeth Britton and the Curly-Grass Fern
Specimen StoriesWomen in Science
Tucked away in an office drawer of NYBG’s Fern Curator, Robbin Moran,…