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,…
Ancient plant DNA
Using a NYBG herbarium specimen, PhD grad student Lizzie Joyce turned back…
The Brittons: Partners in Life and Botany
The establishment of The New York Botanical Garden was the result of…
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…
#plantlove
Specimens contained in the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium represent the endless…
Ellen Hutchins - Ireland's First Female Botanist
Between 1805 and 1813, in Ballylickey on the shores of Bantry Bay,…
John Muir
John Muir (1838–1914) was an influential naturalist and conservationist, and co-founder of the…
Dolly's Lichen
NYBG lichen curator James Lendemer and then-PhD student Jessi Allen named this…
Fancy Foliage
Where did that sweet little potted plant sitting on your window sill…
Typical: Double type
A herbarium's version of a double rainbow — a double type specimen.…
Sugar pine
Called "the most princely of the genus" by David Douglas, sugar pine…
Ellen's Algae
See more of Ellen Hutchin's beautifully detailed marine algae collections.
Wolf lichen
The Wolf Lichen is one of the most showy North American lichens,…
A Horse, of Course
Collecting plants and algae was sometimes an artistic hobby, with dried or…
Gross
Sometimes collecting the perfect specimen means going places you'd rather not. Here…
Insect Zombies
Cordyceps are parasitic fungi that often parasitize insects in a way that…
The Cactaceae
The Cactaceae was a publication written by the founder of NYBG, Nathaniel Lord Britton…
Addisonia
Addisonia: Colored Illustrations and Popular Descriptions of Plants was a journal published by…
The Language of Flowers
Throughout time, people have assigned meaning to flowers, and many cultures have…
Augustine Henry
Augustine Henry was one of the first and most prolific western botanists to collect in Central China,…
Violetta White
Violetta Susan Elizabeth White Delafield (1875–1949) was a promising young mycologist at the…
Jeanne Baret
CollectorsWomen in ScienceExpeditions
Jeanne Baret was the first woman ever to circumnavigate the globe, but…
Frances W. Horne
Frances Horne was an academic, an artist and a botanist. She earned her…
Before & After: P. F. Zika 28277
The unmounted herbarium specimen, as it arrived at the garden in the…
Fabian Michelangeli's field trip to Cuba, November 2013
A recent expedition to eastern Cuba took three Cuban colleagues and me…
Mushroom Paintings
When mycologists collect mushrooms or other fungal fruiting bodies, it's important to…
Newspaper time capsule: B. Maguire 23559
A trip to the field isn't always necessary to describe a new…
The Lemmons: Partners in Botany
Sara Plummer met John Gill Lemmon in 1876 when he came to…
Alice Eastwood
Alice Eastwood was a self-taught Canadian-American botanist. After graduating from high school…
Jean Baptiste François Bulliard
Jean Baptiste François Bulliard was French physician and botanist, especially interested in fungi.…
W. A. Murrill
William Murrill became an assistant curator at NYBG in 1904, and was…