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…
Ellen's Algae
See more of Ellen Hutchin's beautifully detailed marine algae collections.
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…
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…
Frances W. Horne
Frances Horne was an academic, an artist and a botanist. She earned her…
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…
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…
Alice Eastwood
Alice Eastwood was a self-taught Canadian-American botanist. After graduating from high school…
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…
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…
Three Thousand Miles up the Amazon
At the age of 61, Ynés Mexía embarked on the adventure of…
Ellen's Types
Among many of the interesting things Ellen Hutchins collected were collections that…
Ellen's Illustrations
We know Ellen Hutchins produced hundreds of detailed watercolors of marine algae. Some…
Becoming a mountain woman
Marie Mooar spent a lot of time in the wilds of western…
Pitcher Plants
Pitcher Plants sometimes attract insects to their specialized leaves with nectar or…
Sundews
Sundews. Drosera is the largest genus of carniverous plants, with almost 200…
Journey of the US Exploring Expedition (1838-1842)
One of the earliest and most impactful scientific expeditions led by the…
Venus flytrap
Even though Venus Fly Traps are widely available as cultivated plants, they…
Art Cronquist's Hat
If you spend time looking at herbarium specimens collected by Arthur Cronquist,…
Plant species named after Alice Eastwood
Several botanists have honored Eastwood's contributions to science by naming new plant…
Weird & Wild Legumes
Cabinet of CuriositiesSpecimen Stories
Members of plant family Fabaceae (bean or legume family) produce a kind…
Royal Collector
Cabinet of CuriositiesCollectors
Prince Henri of Orléans, a French royal, collected this parasitic fungi in Tibet while…
Mary Emily Eaton
Mary Emily Eaton was an accomplished natural history illustrator employed at the…
What is a type specimen?
When a researcher names a new species of algae, fungi, or plant,…
Typical: Hibiscadelphus stellatus
This type specimen is like a postcard from Hawaii reading "Wish you…
Prairie White Fringed Orchid
Nearly all of the habitat of the endangered Prairie White Fringed Orchid…
Damaged by enemy action
Herbarium specimens are windows into the past and can help us answer…
Good grief, Charles Geyer
Charles (Karl) A. Geyer was a pioneer botanical collector of the Northwestern…
A trip to Fire Island with Peggy Hopkins
While we might not get to summer with the likes of Madonna…