Harvard University Herbaria, Cambridge, Massachusetts, US
22 Divinity Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02143
United States
Gustavo A. Romero, Keeper of the Oakes Ames Orchid Herbarium; Editor, Harvard Papers in Botany
Email: romero@oeb.harvard.edu
Julie McIntosh Shapiro, Team Leader, GPI
Email: jshapiro@oeb.harvard.edu
The Harvard University Herbaria (HUH) include the following herbaria:
- the Gray Herbarium (GH), which emphasizes vascular plants,
- the Herbarium of the Arnold Arboretum (A),
- the Economic Herbarium of Oakes Ames (ECON), and the Oakes Ames Orchid Herbarium (AMES);
- the Farlow Herbarium (FH), which emphasizes non-vascular plants and fungi.
Satellite collections of the herbaria include wood, paleobotanical, and economic botany collections.
With more than 5 million specimens, the Harvard University Herbaria (HUH) is one of the ten largest herbaria in the world. Along with the botanical libraries, which have a combined collection of 280 000 volumes, it forms the world’s largest university-associated botanical endeavor. HUH houses a worldwide collection of vascular plants with an emphasis on the New World, especially North America, and on the eastern and southeastern regions Asia and Malaysia. The collections are especially strong in the Orchidaceae of Mexico and Philippines and also include a worldwide collection of non-vascular cryptogams.
Materials of Special Interest
- The Harvard University Herbaria (HUH) houses one of the most comprehensive collections of Latin American type specimens in the world, with approximately 38 000 Latin American type specimens (not including paratypes). These types are accessioned into one of four HUH collections: the Gray Herbarium (GH), the Herbarium of the Arnold Arboretum (A), the Oakes Ames Orchid Herbarium (AMES), and the Economic Herbarium of Oakes Ames (ECON).
- Major contributors to these collections include, among others, Charles Wright, Edward Palmer, Richard Evans Schultes, Oakes Ames, Miguel Bang, Henry Hurd Rusby, and Julian A. Steyermark.
- Approximately half of the Latin American type specimens are isotypes and 14% are holotypes, lectotypes or neotypes. 46% of the type specimens were collected in South America and 28% in Mexico.
- Protologues for the Latin American collection were published in more than 850 different titles.
- About 35% of the Latin American type collection includes names that were published before 1900.