United States National Herbarium, Smithsonian Institution
NMNH, MRC-166
Smithsonian Institution
P.O. Box 37012
Washington, District of Columbia 20013-7012
United States
Eric Schuettpelz
Email: schuettpelze@si.edu
Sue Lutz
Email: lutzs@si.edu
John Boggan
Email: bogganj@si.edu
At the center of the Museum’s exhibition and research programs are its expertly documented collections: more than 126 million natural science specimens and cultural artifacts. Just to name a few of our museum holdings, the collections include 4½ million plants pressed onto sheets of paper in the Museum’s herbarium. Over 3½ million specimens are out on loan each year; over 15,000 visitor days are spent in the collections; and there are almost 600,000 additional visits to collection data bases available on the Web.
The Museum includes a state-of-the-art collections storage facility in Suitland, Maryland; a marine science research facility in Ft. Pierce, Florida; and field stations as far away as Belize, Alaska, and Kenya. Research activities are organized into seven departments, and a number of affiliated U.S. government agencies on-site contribute to the Museum’s strength, including the Department of the Interior (U.S. Geological Survey Biological Resources Division), the Department of Agriculture (Systematic Entomology Laboratory), the Department of Commerce (National Marine Fisheries Service Systematic Laboratory), and the Department of Defense (Walter Reed Biosystematics Unit).