Visitor Information for the Herbarium of The New York Botanical Garden

Herbarium Visitor Information

718.817.8626 (telephone)
718.817.8648 (fax)
(Revised January 2001)

The New York Botanical Garden Herbarium is open to visitors professional and non-professional with scientific reasons to study the collections. Anyone wishing to study the collections should make arrangements with the Herbarium office (address below).

Directions to the Garden and suggestions for Accommodations are available elsewhere on this site.

Herbarium hours

Monday - Friday, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Weekends and holidays: closed

Address for correspondence

Director of the Herbarium
The New York Botanical Garden
Bronx, NY 10458-5126, U.S.A.
telephone: 718/817-8626
email: bthiers@nybg.org
fax: 718/817-8648

Prior to arrival

When planning a visit to the Herbarium, please contact one of the following people to arrange your visit:

Dr. Barbara Thiers, Director of the Herbarium (bthiers@nybg.org),

Dr. Jacquelyn Kallunki, Associate Director of the Herbarium (Vascular plants; jkallunki@nybg.org).

Upon arrival

Please ask the security guard or switchboard operator in the Watson Building Lobby to call the herbarium office, ext. 8626 or 8638, to announce your arrival. A member of the herbarium staff will greet you, have you sign the guest register, and issue to you a visitor badge, which must be worn while you are in the building. Normal working hours are 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday-Friday. By special arrangement, you may be able to work before and after these hours. Tours of the herbarium and service areas can be arranged upon request.

New York City law prohibits smoking anywhere in the International Plant Science Center-Museum-Watson Building complex.

The LuEsther T. Mertz Library of The New York Botanical Garden is closed to the public on Sunday and Monday. On Tuesday through Thursday, it is open to the public from noon to 6:00 p.m. and on Friday and Saturday from noon to 5:00 p.m. By special arrangement, you may be able to work in the Library from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Monday and in the mornings on Tuesday through Friday.

Lunch

You are invited to bring lunch and eat with the staff at 12:30 p.m. at the lunch-table near the herbarium office (room 461-Museum). If you prefer, you can walk to a nearby cafe, delicatessen, or take-out restaurant or to the Terrace Cafe on the Garden grounds. The herbarium secretary (room 461-Museum) can provide you with a list, or ask any member of the staff for directions. Vending machines, including a coffee machine, are located near the Watson Building Lobby.

Freezing study specimens

Any specimens brought to the herbarium to be studied must be frozen for 48 hours before using them in the herbarium to reduce the possibility of introducing insect pests. Our shipping supervisor (room 159-Museum) will handle the freezing of your specimens. If you plan to be here for only one or two days, you must mail your specimens to be frozen in advance of your visit.

Arrangement of the collections

Families are arranged in the Englerian sequence, modified to reflect the families recognized by Cronquist, 1988. Within each family, the genera are sorted alphabetically; each genus is sorted into geographical regions in color-coded folders; and within geographic regions the species are sorted alphabetically, with unidentified specimens at the end of each category. Boxes of separate parts, including fruits, are filed at the end of each family.

Type specimens are arranged in a similar fashion but in a separate sequence.

Rules for use of the herbarium

Before opening a new aisle in the compactor, check to be certain that no one or no thing is in the open aisle within the same bank.
Given that someone will try, however, to close an aisle without first checking to see that it is clear, please close cabinet doors and remove carts and step-stools from an aisle in which you are working whenever you yourself are not working in the aisle.
Do not roll more than two banks at a time. Rolling more than two banks at one time puts excessive pressure on the chain within the end panel of the bank you are cranking.
Do not leave the aisles only partially open. The safety system doesn't always go into effect when the aisles are only partly open.
Be thoughtful of others using the area and of the specimens. Do not leave specimens, genus covers, species covers, etc. on the counterheight cabinets overnight.
Any specimens to be filed into the herbarium (for example, any that have been housed in an office for any length of time) must be frozen immediately prior to their filing.
Anytime after 4 pm in the afternoon, please turn off the lights when leaving an area if you are the only person in the room. On the 5^th floor of the Herbarium, check to see if anyone is in the Fungus Room before turning off the lights. To do so, you can use the master switch, which is the left-most switch of the series of three to the right of the door as you exit.
No food or drink, including candy and cookies, is allowed in the Herbarium. There are drinking fountains in the elevator lobby on each floor.
The blue wastebaskets are for recyclable paper only, i.e., white paper, newsprint, magazines. All other trash must be placed in the tan wastebaskets.
The Herbarium is a place for visitors and staff to work peacefully. If you need to hold a long conversation with another person working in the Herbarium, please find somewhere outside the main ranges to talk so that others in the area can concentrate on their work.
If time permits, please refile the specimens that you examined--with the exception of those noted in the following section (Annotations):

Annotations

Visiting specialists are encouraged to annotate specimens using permanent ink on annotation labels, indicating the name of the investigator and the date of annotation. Annotation labels, if you do not have your own, and glue are available in supply baskets on the counters on each floor of the herbarium and in the study rooms. Please use glue to attach to the specimen any annotation labels that you create.

Annotate previously unverified types with the basionym and original place of publication and include your name. Give these to a member of the Herbarium Staff for inclusion in the Type Database. Special type annotation labels can be obtained from any staff member.

If you annotate any collections, please set them aside to be recorded by one of the herbarium staff, but please make sure to leave species and genus covers in the herbarium cases.

If your study results in the necessity of a rearrangement of our collections, please leave the specimens that you annotated on a table with a complete list of synonyms, so that the specimens can be filed and cross-referenced properly.

Study Rooms

If you are assigned to a study room, please work with your specimens in that room, to the extent possible, in order to leave the scopes and counters in the herbarium itself available to those without a study room in which to work.

A $10 deposit will be collected when keys to the study room are issued and will be refunded when they are returned to the Herbarium Office at the end of your stay.

Destructive sampling of specimens

Removal of samples (e.g., pollen or leaf) from specimens may be undertaken only if permission is granted by the Director or Associate Director of the Herbarium, and then only in compliance with the Policy on Destructive Sampling of Herbarium Specimens.

Loans

Specimens that you desire to have sent on loan for further study should be set aside and clearly labeled with your name and institutional address (forms for this purpose will be provided). Please separate types from non-types. Return the genus folders, species covers, and mounted literature to the herbarium cases. A formal written request for the loan must be received from the director of your herbarium before the material will be sent.