A herbarium is a collection of dried plant specimens carefully preserved, labelled, and arranged for reference.
Herbaria are invaluable resources for the study of botany, taxonomy and biogeography. They provide insight into plant relationships, history, evolution, distribution and variation, help identify unknown specimens and aid in the production of guidebooks, checklists and identification manuals.
Plans to build a herbarium at Royal Botanical Gardens began in 1947 and came to fruition in 1950. Four years after its opening more than 5,000 plant specimens had been collected. In 1963 the herbarium expanded when McMaster University’s herbarium was transferred to the Gardens.
Today RBG’s Herbarium (known internationally as HAM) houses approximately 60, 000 vascular plant specimens, and is quite unique as it includes both wild and cultivated plants. Over 1,500 genera, from 230 families, are represented within the collection.
Many of the wild plant specimens in RBG’s herbarium collection represent locally, provincially and nationally at-risk species. Specimens of wild and cultivated plants have been collected from RBG’s gardens and nature sanctuaries, and from other gardens and natural areas in Ontario and other Canadian provinces and territories, as well as internationally from the Caribbean, Europe, Australia and Saudi Arabia.
HAM is recognized as a repository for Standard Portfolios and Nomenclatural Standards of cultivated plants, and is the only herbarium recognized in all of Canada known to be actively collecting and maintaining designated nomenclatural standards. HAM holds Standard Portfolios associated with the cultivated plant registry for the genus Syringa.
The specimens in the HAM collection serve as a vital reference for plant and cultivar identification, for studying past and current plant distribution and cultivation, and for teaching. The collection serves and informs RBG’s mandated program areas and is used by staff in the departments of science, horticulture, education and conservation.
Find out when to visit our facilities and how to go about requesting herbarium loans.
We are interested in accepting high quality vascular plant vouchers.
RBG is working toward digitizing our 60, 000 herbarium specimens to improve our accessibility
Find out more about the curatorial management of our herbarium collection.
Looking for assistance in identifying your plants? Find out more about what services we offer.