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The Museum's botany collection holds an estimated 5.25 million specimens of algae, bryophytes, ferns, seed plants, lichens and slime moulds from all over the world.
The botanical collection spans a period from the 17th century to the present and includes a number of historically important collections such as those of:
- Sir Hans Sloane
- Sir Joseph Banks
Looking for a specimen?
The botany collection is being digitised
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Diatoms
Our collection is one of the largest in the world, containing over 300,000 specimens accumulated from the early nineteenth century to the present day.
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Algae
Our algae collection is among the largest in the world and includes a rich source of important historical material.
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Slime mould
This collection has a global scope and was the foundation for the book “Monograph of the Myzetozoa” by A and G Lister.
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Lichens
Our lichen collection is is an important research resource and one of the world's largest lichen collections.
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Bryophytes
Examination of this material has revealed new taxonomic and distributional data, with more yet to be discovered.
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The British and Irish herbarium
Nearly every known British and Irish native or established non-native taxon is represented.
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Ferns
We house one of the most important collections of ferns and other seed-free vascular plants in the world, with around 350,000 specimens.
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General Herbarium
Our two million General Herbarium specimens represent a unique global resource for studying global seed plant diversity.
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Historical (pre-Linnean) botanical collections
The Historical Collections Room houses some of our most historic items, including botanical specimens collected over 400 years ago.
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Collections on the move
Access to some collections will be affected as we prepare for the move to our new collections, science and digitisation centre.
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Accessing the collections
Scientists and collections management specialists can visit the collections and borrow specimens for research.
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Collections management
Our duty is to provide a safe and secure environment for all of our collections.