Australian and New Zealand herbaria house over eight million plant, algae and fungi specimens. Herbarium specimens are an important resource for research on the Australasian flora and provide a permanent record of the occurrence of a species at a particular place and time. The AVH provides access to the collecting data associated with these specimens.
Herbaria are active research collections that are used for taxonomic,
historical and ecological research (AD 234223).
Photo: State Herbarium of South Australia. 
Herbaria often contain separate carpological collections to house large
fruits – such as Banksia cones, pine cones and these fruits of
Flindersia australis (MEL 2013790)
– that are too bulky to be mounted on a typical herbarium sheet. Photo: Janusz Molinski. © Royal Botanic Gardens Board 2020. All rights reserved.
Although most plant specimens are pressed and
dried, some – such as these orchids – are preserved in alcohol in order
to retain important diagnostic characters that would be lost upon
drying. Photo: Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria.
As well as vascular plant specimens, herbaria
house collections of cryptogams, fungi and algae, such as this specimen
of the lichen Teloschistes fasciculatus (MEL 22411).
Photo: Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria.
Important diagnostic features – such as the
colour and form of fungi fruit bodies – can be lost when specimens are
dried, so illustrations and photographs are often used to record these
details prior to preservation.
Photo: Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria.
In addition to specimens collected within
Australia and New Zealand, many Australasian herbaria contain important collections of
plants, algae and fungi from other countries. Photo: Janusz Molinski,
© Royal Botanic Gardens Board 2020. All rights reserved.
