Carnivorous plants
Cabinet of CuriositiesFocus on Science
Watch out, these plants are hungry! Most carnivorous plants grow in bogs…
Fetid Flowers
With names like Stinking Benjamin, Corpse Flower, and Skunk Cabbage; these flowers…
4 Millionth Specimen
With 7,800,000 specimens in our herbarium, reaching 4,000,000 specimens catalogued in our…
Daffodils are blooming!
It's springtime and the daffodils are blooming outside! In the herbarium, these…
Most Vibrant
Cabinet of CuriositiesWorks of Art
If we were to give yearbook superlatives to herbarium specimens, these would…
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 Torrey
John Torrey (1796-1873) is considered one of the most influential American botanists…
John Torrey on Gray's Peak
In 1861 Charles Parry was the first explorer to ascend Gray's Peak…
Springtime with Peter Zika
If seasonal allergies or the depths of winter have got you down,…
Ancient plant DNA
Using a NYBG herbarium specimen, PhD grad student Lizzie Joyce turned back…
The Brittons: Partners in Life and Botany
The establishment of The New York Botanical Garden was the result of…
David Hosack's Elgin Botanic Garden
Elgin Botanic Garden was the first public botanical garden in the United…
Otto Kuntze
Carl Ernst Otto Kuntze was a german botanist who made expeditions to every…
#plantlove
Specimens contained in the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium represent the endless…
Ellen Hutchins - Ireland's First Female Botanist
Between 1805 and 1813, in Ballylickey on the shores of Bantry Bay,…
John Muir
John Muir (1838–1914) was an influential naturalist and conservationist, and co-founder of the…
Dolly's Lichen
NYBG lichen curator James Lendemer and then-PhD student Jessi Allen named this…
Fancy Foliage
Where did that sweet little potted plant sitting on your window sill…
Ellen's Algae
See more of Ellen Hutchin's beautifully detailed marine algae collections.
Typical: Double type
A herbarium's version of a double rainbow — a double type specimen.…
Sugar pine
Called "the most princely of the genus" by David Douglas, sugar pine…
Wolf lichen
The Wolf Lichen is one of the most showy North American lichens,…
A Horse, of Course
Collecting plants and algae was sometimes an artistic hobby, with dried or…
Gross
Sometimes collecting the perfect specimen means going places you'd rather not. Here…
Insect Zombies
Cordyceps are parasitic fungi that often parasitize insects in a way that…
The Cactaceae
The Cactaceae was a publication written by the founder of NYBG, Nathaniel Lord Britton…
Addisonia
Addisonia: Colored Illustrations and Popular Descriptions of Plants was a journal published by…
The Language of Flowers
Throughout time, people have assigned meaning to flowers, and many cultures have…
Augustine Henry
Augustine Henry was one of the first and most prolific western botanists to collect in Central China,…
Violetta White
Violetta Susan Elizabeth White Delafield (1875–1949) was a promising young mycologist at the…
Jeanne Baret
CollectorsWomen in ScienceExpeditions
Jeanne Baret was the first woman ever to circumnavigate the globe, but…
Frances W. Horne
Frances Horne was an academic, an artist and a botanist. She earned her…
Before & After: P. F. Zika 28277
The unmounted herbarium specimen, as it arrived at the garden in the…
Fabian Michelangeli's field trip to Cuba, November 2013
A recent expedition to eastern Cuba took three Cuban colleagues and me…
Mushroom Paintings
When mycologists collect mushrooms or other fungal fruiting bodies, it's important to…
Newspaper time capsule: B. Maguire 23559
A trip to the field isn't always necessary to describe a new…
The Lemmons: Partners in Botany
Sara Plummer met John Gill Lemmon in 1876 when he came to…
Alice Eastwood
Alice Eastwood was a self-taught Canadian-American botanist. After graduating from high school…
Jean Baptiste François Bulliard
Jean Baptiste François Bulliard was French physician and botanist, especially interested in fungi.…
W. A. Murrill
William Murrill became an assistant curator at NYBG in 1904, and was…
Three Thousand Miles up the Amazon
At the age of 61, Ynés Mexía embarked on the adventure of…
Ellen's Types
Among many of the interesting things Ellen Hutchins collected were collections that…
Ellen's Illustrations
We know Ellen Hutchins produced hundreds of detailed watercolors of marine algae. Some…
Becoming a mountain woman
Marie Mooar spent a lot of time in the wilds of western…
Pitcher Plants
Pitcher Plants sometimes attract insects to their specialized leaves with nectar or…
Sundews
Sundews. Drosera is the largest genus of carniverous plants, with almost 200…
Journey of the US Exploring Expedition (1838-1842)
One of the earliest and most impactful scientific expeditions led by the…
Venus flytrap
Even though Venus Fly Traps are widely available as cultivated plants, they…
Art Cronquist's Hat
If you spend time looking at herbarium specimens collected by Arthur Cronquist,…