University Herbarium - University of California Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
1001 Valley Life Sciences Building #2465
Berkeley, CA 94720-2465
United States
Andrew Doran, Assistant Director, Collections
Email: andrewdoran@berkeley.edu
The mission of the University Herbarium is to understand the systematics, ecology, and evolution of all groups traditionally considered plants on a worldwide basis. Established in 1895 around a core of preserved plant specimens that were collected by William Brewer on the California Geological Survey of 1860 to 1864, the University Herbarium now includes specimens from land plants, algae, lichens, and fungi.
It is the oldest museum facility on campus. It also contains an extensive cryptogamic library as well as archives of several important botanists in the western part of North America. Now grown to 2,100,000 specimens, it is the sixth largest herbarium in the United States, the largest west of the Missouri Botanical Garden, and the largest at a public university. Its collection of marine algae (seaweeds) is one of the best in the world and the finest in the western hemisphere.