Cambridge University Herbarium
Department of Plant Sciences
Downing Street
Cambridge
CB2 3EA
United Kingdom
John Parker
Email: cb248@cam.ac.uk
The University Herbarium, established in 1761, houses an internationally famous collection of more than 1 million pressed, mounted, and named plant specimens arranged in systematic order. Specimens from around the world have been added to the collection as a result of purchases, gifts, exchanges, and benefactions. The herbarium contains some 50 000 type specimens. It is famous for its historic collections, for example, the plant specimens collected by Henslow's student Charles Darwin on the voyage of the HMS Beagle, the 50 000 specimens of Dr. Charles Lemann, and the John Lindley Herbarium with its many new species collected on 19th-century expeditions to unexplored places in North America and Australia. The plants from John Lindley are primary from the world's tropics and almost all have a type status. The herbarium also has a unique collection of taxonomic books and floras.