The Saguaro Cactus: Emblematic Plant of the American…
Specimen StoriesWhat's in a name?
With its tall, columnar shape and upward-bending branches, the cactus we know…
Milestones
Since its inception NYBG has focused on building an extensive and valuable herbarium…
John Torrey
John Torrey (1796-1873) is considered one of the most influential American botanists…
The Lackluster Major William Rich
Major William Rich was selected to be the botanist on the U. S.…
An Unrequited Botanical Love Story
The love of botany is responsible for both fostering and hindering this…
The Cactaceae
The Cactaceae was a publication written by the founder of NYBG, Nathaniel Lord Britton…
Snap shot of the Rock Garden, circa 1942
NYBG's Rock Garden in the spring is full of treasures that have been documented…
Flora Borinqueña
In February 1906, Nathaniel and Elizabeth Britton, founders of The New York…
David Hosack's Elgin Botanic Garden
Elgin Botanic Garden was the first public botanical garden in the United…
Where the Gold was First Discovered
Cabinet of CuriositiesExpeditions
Herbarium specimens have been collected at poignant points in history. Major William Rich was…
Augustine Henry
Augustine Henry was one of the first and most prolific western botanists to collect in Central China,…
Plants of Sítio Roberto Burle Marx
Roberto Burle Marx was an artist, a landscape architect and an early…
Addisonia
Addisonia: Colored Illustrations and Popular Descriptions of Plants was a journal published by…
Otto Kuntze
Carl Ernst Otto Kuntze was a german botanist who made expeditions to every…
Botanical Treasure Discovered at Lehman College
Women in ScienceCollectorsSpecimen Stories
In the basement of Lehman College’s Science Hall, in a dumpster waiting…
Mary Emily Eaton
Mary Emily Eaton was an accomplished natural history illustrator employed at the…
The Brittons: Partners in Life and Botany
The establishment of The New York Botanical Garden was the result of…
Jeanne Baret
CollectorsWomen in ScienceExpeditions
Jeanne Baret was the first woman ever to circumnavigate the globe, but…
Discovering a Darwin Collection
Cabinet of CuriositiesSpecimen Stories
In the museum world, there's a sort of joke that you never…
Ellen's Algae
See more of Ellen Hutchin's beautifully detailed marine algae collections.
Ellen's Types
Among many of the interesting things Ellen Hutchins collected were collections that…
Mary Treat
Those who have read Barbara Kingsolver's newest novel, Unsheltered, will be familiar with the…
Britton's Chara
In the United States, there is no formal regulation for the endangered…
Ellen's Illustrations
We know Ellen Hutchins produced hundreds of detailed watercolors of marine algae. Some…
Journey of the US Exploring Expedition (1838-1842)
One of the earliest and most impactful scientific expeditions led by the…
Newspaper time capsule: B. Maguire 23559
A trip to the field isn't always necessary to describe a new…
Damaged by enemy action
Herbarium specimens are windows into the past and can help us answer…
J. K. Small's exploration in Southern Florida, 1915
John Kunkel Small, botanist and herbarium curator at the the New York Botanical…
John Kunkel Small
John Kunkel Small (1869-1938) was a taxonomist and botanical explorer, who specialized…
John Muir
John Muir (1838–1914) was an influential naturalist and conservationist, and co-founder of the…
Typical: Christmas in the clouds
Bassett Maguire (1904–1991), a botanist who spent the majority of his career…
Salix loan to Japan
Botany is a collaborative science that relies on sharing data and specimens…
George Washington Carver
George Washington Carver (1860s–1943) was an inventor, teacher, botanist, and mycologist (a…
Women's Scientific Empowerment
Natural history was immensely popular in the Victorian era, but women were…
Good grief, Charles Geyer
Charles (Karl) A. Geyer was a pioneer botanical collector of the Northwestern…
For the duration: The safekeeping of American herbaria…
The bombing of the military complex at Pearl Harbor, on December 7,…
The Lemmons: Partners in Botany
Sara Plummer met John Gill Lemmon in 1876 when he came to…
Myanmar Mystery Solved
Working in a Herbarium sometimes requires detective work. This Myanmar mystery started…
A Botanical Tour of Harlem
The New York City neighborhood of Harlem is a center for Black…
Exploring the Bahamas with Lewis Jones Knight Brace
The Bahamas suffered its worst natural disaster recently as Hurricane Dorian, a…
John Torrey’s Trip to California and Colorado, 1872
In July of 1872, John Torrey and his daughter Margaret departed on…
Oro City – A Colorado Ghost Town
Oro City was a gold placer (stream-bed) mining town in Colorado, founded…
Elizabeth Britton and the Curly-Grass Fern
Specimen StoriesWomen in Science
Tucked away in an office drawer of NYBG’s Fern Curator, Robbin Moran,…
Kate Furbish and the Flora of Maine
Catherine Furbish was born in 1834 in Exeter, New Hampshire. From an…
Ellen Hutchins - Ireland's First Female Botanist
Between 1805 and 1813, in Ballylickey on the shores of Bantry Bay,…
The Biltmore Herbarium: Botany and America’s Largest Home
Biltmore, a Gilded Era mansion in Asheville, North Carolina, is America’s largest…
Black Botany: The Nature of Black Experience
Black Botany: The Nature of Black Experience seeks to acknowledge the complex…
Bean-boozled
Cosmopolitan has a long-standing journalistic reputation for getting straight to the heart…
NAACP member J. E. Spingarn and the Clematis…
Joel Elias Spingarn (May 17, 1875 - July 26, 1939) was a…