General Herbarium

Pressed banksia leaves

The Museum's two million General Herbarium specimens represent a unique global resource for studying global seed plant diversity.

The collections in the General Herbarium are from all over the world except Britain and Ireland; these are found in the British and Irish Herbarium.

Pre-Linnean collections are also curated separately, in the Historical Collections.

Collection strengths

The Museum holds major seed plant collections from all over the world and an estimated 110,000 nomenclaturally important type specimens. The botanical collections of the Museum are especially rich in historical material.

The General Herbarium is managed in four sections (General Herbarium I-IV) with each section managed by a curator.

  • General Herbarium I: Gymnosperms, 'basal' angiosperms, the monocotyledons, and non-core eudicotyledons.
  • General Herbarium II: Fabids.
  • General Herbarium III: Malvids and the superasterids, except for lamiids and campanulids
  • General Herbarium IV: Lamiids and campanulids.

For details of the families curated by each section, please see the Classification and Arrangement of the General Herbarium at the Museum cladogram (PDF, 1.41MB).

Parts of the botany collection are being digitised

If you would like to use any specimens for research, please get in touch.

2,000,000

110,000

Material type

  • Mainly pressed plants mounted on herbarium sheets
  • Boxed 'carpological' material at the end of each order in the main collection
  • A separate historical collection of seeds
  • Spirit material
  • Separate oversized material
  • Microscopical slides

Major collections

The botanical collections of the Museum are rich in historical material.

The General Herbarium includes specimens made on voyages such as those of James Cook, HMS Beagle, HMS Challenger, and Parry.

Collectors

Areas of origin

The collection covers a broad geographical range with collections from:

Central America

The West Indies

Australia

The Himalayas

Europe and the Mediterranean

Macaronesia

Access to some collections will be affected as we prepare for the move to our new collections, science and digitisation centre.

Scientists and collections management specialists can visit the collections and borrow specimens for research.

Our duty is to provide a safe and secure environment for all of our collections.