Welcome to the Digital RMBL Herbarium!

What can you do here?

You can get information about plants that occur in the ecosystems around RMBL. Search by common plant name, scientific name, or browse by plant family. You can access everything from photos to current or archived RMBL research projects.

What is an herbarium?

An herbarium is a collection of cataloged plant specimens (called voucher specimens) that are carefully pressed and preserved with detailed information about the location and habitat where the sample was collected. Pressed samples typically include all plant parts: roots, stems, leaves, flowers, and fruits. In essence, an herbarium is analogous to a library of carefully preserved plants where the specimens themselves and the labels associated with them provide a wealth of information once they have been “read” and studied by scientists.

The Digital RMBL Herbarium contains photos of plants in the field, their location, and habitat as well as information about RMBL research projects that involve those plants.

How do scientists use herbaria?

Herbaria are primarily used to study of plant taxonomy, study the geographic distributions of plant species and how they change through time, and catalog or identify the flora of an area. As we lose natural habitats the world over, herbaria increasingly serve as a record of the recent history of plant life and as a repository of precious genetic information.

Before downloading or using any RMBL data, read the RMBL Data Use Agreement.