Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
Edinburgh, EH3 5LR
United Kingdom
Dr David Harris, Curator
Tel: +44 131 248 2862
Email: d.harris@rbge.org.uk
The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh Herbarium contains 2 million pressed plants, the oldest being a specimen collected from South Africa in 1697. The herbarium was founded in 1836, and moved into its present, purpose-built home in 1964. The herbarium has worldwide coverage and includes diatoms, algae, fungi, lichens, mosses, ferns, and higher plants. It is part of an international network that exchanges and loans out specimens for research. Specimen data and images are being incorporated into the RBGE collections database; the data is available in searchable format on our website. RBGE is also creating a database of all its known African type specimens as part of a collaborative project funded by the Mellon Foundation.