Herbarium image
The Herbarium at the National Botanic Garden of Wales houses more than 30,000 dried, pressed plant specimens, representing a blend of contemporary research samples, seed-banking voucher material, and historic collections.
Among these is the James Cosmo Melvill Herbarium, a significant late-19th-century collection of British and Irish flora, generously donated in 2010 by the governors of Harrow School. Many of these specimens came into his collections via the Botanical Exchange Club of the British Isles. The Club promoted the exchange of botanical specimens among its members to aid in the study of British and Irish flora, and played an important role in facilitating communication and collaboration among amateur and professional botanists. This network helped Melvill to gather specimens from over 200 collectors.
Herbarium Explorer opens the doors to this hidden archive, allowing you to discover, study and appreciate the botanical heritage preserved at the National Botanic Garden of Wales.
Specimen images on this webpage are available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license.
For more information, please contact Curator of Seed Bank and Herbarium, Dr Kevin McGinn: kevin.mcginn@gardenofwales.org.uk.

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NLHF logo Thanks to support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, we have been able to conserve, catalogue and digitise these diverse collections, beginning with the Melvill specimens, to make them accessible to all.
Our herbarium has 1752 specimens belonging to 322 different taxa in 42 plant families. The number of images is 2225.