May 1 through 31, 2025
Onsite | Online
Join us for a celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month programs at NYBG! Take part in on-site tours, explore important plant specimens in our Herbarium representing the flora of Asia and the Pacific, and learn about significant figures in botanical history.
May 2, 6, 14, 23, & 31*; various times
Meet at the Reflecting Pool
Spend some time with an NYBG Tour Guide, taking a tour of a few wonderful plants in the Garden that have Chinese roots. You will learn stories of their discovery and their cultural significance.
*Tour provided in Mandarin
In recognition of AAPI month, we’re shining a spotlight on Steere Herbarium collections from Asia and the Pacific. These collections document biodiversity and support conservation efforts in some of most botanically and culturally diverse regions of the planet.
To share these data with the global community, NYBG is a partner in the NSF funded “All Asia” TCN, mobilizing specimen data from Siberia to Papua New Guinea, and Pakistan to French Polynesia. So far, we’ve shared 300,000 specimens, and increased the number of NYBG Asia-Pacific specimens with latitude and longitude coordinates by a quarter. We share these data with the countries and communities from where these plants originated to support resilient livelihoods, strengthen our institutional relationships across Asia and the Pacific, and help guide international conservation efforts across Asia and the Pacific.
Born in China and raised in Taiwan, Rose Li became an Associate Librarian in 1983, becoming the first Asian-American librarian in charge of Mertz Library’s Technical Services department. Supervising and training staff, Li also used her knowledge of the Asiatic and French languages to transcribe and create catalog records.
Indigenous cultures care for nearly one-quarter of Earth’s terrestrial surface, but face challenges ranging from natural disasters and environmental degradation to loss of cultures and languages. Vanuatu, a biodiversity and language hotspot in the Pacific, is of the few remaining countries that maintain strong customary stewardship of their biodiversity resources and nature-dependent culture.
Before Dr. Isabella Aiona Abbott became the first Native Hawaiian woman to receive a doctorate in science, before the 150 journal articles and 8 books, before she was named the “First Lady of Limu,” she was a young girl collecting seaweed on the shores of Honolulu with her family.
Learn about artist Eduardo Arandia Salgado, whose work as a painter and botanical illustrator calligraphy graced the front cover of the Garden Journal and illustrated the works of NYBG botanists, in addition to being featured in the collection of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Lead image: Acer palmatum ‘Hupp’s Red Willow’—Japanese maple in the Steinhardt Maple Collection