Botany Collections

Collectors and Collections

The list of collectors whose specimens are housed at PH is a veritable Who's Who of early botany and scientific exploration in North America. The table below provides just a glimpse of the highlights of our special collections; for a more complete presentation consult Mears (1981). Notably, PH has all but a few of the specimens that were brought back from the expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. (You can also check out the plants collected by Lewis and Clark in an online exhibit at plantsystematics.org or at the Lewis & Clark as Naturalists online exhibit at the Smithsonian.) B.S. Barton and G.H.E. Muhlenberg were early members of the American Philosophical Society (APS), the first scientific association in the New World, founded by Benjamin Franklin, John Bartram, and others. The APS herbarium came to PH at the end of the 19th century; other institutional and private donations have extended the scope and strength of the collection. (See APS Collections on Deposit at ANS APS Collections on Deposit at the Academy.)

Examples of historically significant collectors 

Collector/Source	Active Period	Specimens	Notes
Benjamin Smith Barton	18th century	2,000	Many holotypes of Pursh, Torrey & Gray, Nuttall
Frederick Pursh	18th century	1,200	North America, West Indies
Henry Muhlenberg	Late 18th-early 19th century	17,000	Early Eastern US
Thomas Nuttall	Early 19th century	4,000	Western North America
C.W. Short	19th century	15,000	Worldwide exchange
Lewis D. von Schweinitz	Early 19th century	23,000	Worldwide, plants and fungi

The herbarium also has notable strengths that reflect the taxonomic or geographic interests of past curators and associates, including F.W. Pennell (Scrophulariaceae, the snapdragon family; Asia and S. America,), E.T. Wherry (Polemoniaceae, the phlox family), T.C. Porter, M.G. Henry (Pacific Northwest), B.H. Long (Eastern US), B. Stone (Pandanaceae, the screw pine family; Rutaceae, the citrus family; S.E. Asia), and A.E. Schuyler (Cyperaceae; the sedge family). PH is the primary repository and source of information for these botanists' collections. Download a pdf on these and other collectors represented in the PH.

You can view the PH collection of the Pandanaceae at: ph.ansp.org/collections/pandanaceae/, and the PH collection of specimens collected by Forster and Forster at ph.ansp.org/collections/forster.

The significance of the collection is further evidenced by the large Type Collection (>40,000 specimens).

Size of PH Collections

Taxon/Category		Collection Size	Related Documents
Vascular Plants:
	Angiosperms	1,144,800
	Gymnosperms	6,000
	Pteridophytes	38,000	Ferns at PH
	Bryophytes	77,990
	Cones, Fruits and seeds	2,000	Seed Vials at PH
Cryptogams:
	Algae (including cyanophytes)	28,100	Algae at PH
	Fungi	28,600	Fungi at PH
	Lichens	24,500
Fossil Plants		4,850
Subtotal, General Collection		1,354,840

Cryptogamic Herbaria

Fossil Plants

Vascular Herbarium

Online Databases

Data and images of all type and many historical specimens are available from JSTOR Global Plants. Be sure to search there first.

All North American lichen and bryophyte specimens from the general collections have been databased and are available from the Consortium of North American Lichen Herbaria, the Consortium of North American Bryophyte Herbaria, and the iDigBio portal.

All specimens from Taiwan are available at Plants of Taiwan.

A subset of vascular plant specimens from Pennsylvania from the general collection are available through the SEINET portal.

You can also check the herbarium’s collections database which contains a subset of specimens from the type and general collections.