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Inside The New York Botanical Garden

Archive: December 2009

Our Herbarium: Dynamic Resource for Rapidly Changing World

Posted in Science on December 1 2009, by Plant Talk

Barbara Thiers, Ph.D., is Director of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium and oversees the C.V. Starr Virtual Herbarium.

Part 1 in a 3-part series

insideThe 7.3 million collections of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium, the largest in the Western Hemisphere and among the four largest in the world, form the core of a beehive of activity. On a typical work day during the past year, our Herbarium staff of 29 full-time equivalents answered 28 requests for information via e-mail or phone, helped 10 visiting researchers use the Herbarium, sent 214 specimens on loan (over the year we sent to 38 countries and 38 states of the United States), added 360 new specimens, and digitized 400 specimens for sharing on-line through the C.V. Starr Virtual Herbarium.

Each herbarium specimen is a primary source of historical information about the Earth’s vegetation as well as about the person who collected it. The label that accompanies each specimen gives not only the name of the plant, but where and when it was collected, and by whom. Some labels give far more information, such as the name of the expedition, the funding source, and names of other members of the collecting party. Historical specimens often bear original handwriting, and sometimes notes, correspondence or sketches.

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