The Linnaean Herbarium

The herbarium held by the Linnean Society of London is the single most important Linnaean collection of plant specimens, as well as the largest.  It contains some 14,300 specimens, many pre-dating Linnaeus’ seminal work, Species Plantarum (1753). More than 4,000 of these are type* specimens for Linnaean names and include plants from Asia, Europe and the Americas collected during a time of intense exploration of new lands.

[*A type specimen is one which is permanently associated with a given scientific name, and acts as a permanent reference to confirm the identity of the species to which the name must apply.]

Although most of its predecessors in the 17th and 18th centuries were what had been known as Horti Sicci, bound volumes in which specimens were mounted, often many to a page, Linnaeus had a clear view of how a herbarium should be prepared and organised, and this involved mounting specimens singly on unbound sheets of paper.  This method dispensed with the need for the sorts of potentially complicated indexes that were often necessary in bound collections, and also allowed for the easy incorporation of new material, as well as for substantial reorganisation should that prove either desirable or necessary.

The Linnaean Herbarium held by the Linnean Society is particularly rare because it is an example of a personal herbarium of a famous scientist that has been kept in its original state and not be remounted or relabelled.  The Society holds the herbarium together with Linnaeus' personal library, correspondence and the rest of his collections.

For more information on the Herbarium see Charlie Jarvis' article, "A concise history of the Linnean Society's Linnaean Herbarium, with some notes on the dating of the specimens it contains" in The Linnean Special Issue No. 7, 'The Linnaean Collections'.

We still know relatively little about plants, even after so many centuries of study, and we are losing plant species and their genetic diversity thousands of times more rapidly than has been the case historically.  The Linnaean Herbarium is an invaluable resource for the study plant taxonomy and work towards the conservation of naturally occurring diversity.

The information contained in the herbarium is of critical importance to the correct naming and identification of botanical specimens. The type specimens represent the original concept of new species, exemplified by the specimens and illustrations used when assigning binomial scientific names, the foundation stones of taxonomy.

The collections are constantly referred to by researchers throughout the world and many specimens have been cited and/or illustrated in taxonomic papers. Full references to all such citations are added to the specimen data.

The Society’s aim is to make available its primary research material in digital formats to support taxonomic and conservation efforts worldwide as well as providing public pleasure and enjoyment. To provide worldwide online access to its priceless collections of specimens, manuscripts and letters, the Society is creating a digital archive of over 10.7 Terabytes of unique material, under the overall title of the “CARLS Programme” (Computerised Access to the Records of the Linnean Society).  The Society is also supporting important initiatives to enable much wider access to Linnaean holdings worldwide through partnerships and funding support, such as The Linnaeus Link Project.   

Previously, specimens could only be studied by a personal visit to the herbarium, or examined remotely via microfiche which only provides low resolution images, making close study of plant characteristics difficult. This project aims to facilitate the Society’s aim of making all the specimens freely available on-line, whilst at the same time, creating an electronic archive of the herbarium on behalf of the Society.  Imaging of the collections is now complete and work towards providing on-line access is now at an advanced stage.

The specimens are scanned at a resolution of 600dpi and saved as TIFF files. On-line versions will be made available at the same resolution and served through a purpose designed web viewer with built in tools including zoom and measuring functionality in conjunction with a dedicated image server.

The high quality images enable us to see plant parts in specific detail, such as hairs, stamens, styles, etc.  Small parts of the specimen which are either loose, or have been removed for study, are being placed within an archive quality capsule during the imaging process. These are also scanned together with the specimen.

Any small or loose pieces of material have also been conserved appropriately as part of the imaging process and these have been imaged along with the relevant specimen.

Some specimens will have more than one image if they are heavily annotated. Some bear inscriptions on the reverse of the sheet, whilst others have additional notes attached to the front of the sheet which may obscure the specimen itself. In both cases such annotations are imaged separately and will also be available on-line in conjunction with the specimens to which they relate.

LINNAEAN HERBARIUM NOW AVAILABLE ONLINE 

The Linnaean Plant Name Typification Project has been working to establish type specimens for the 9,000 plant species with names coined by Linnaeus, so that the names can be correctly used. 

Click here for more information

Order out of Chaos: Linnaean Plant Names and their Types, a major new work from the Linnaean Plant Name Typfication Project is a comprehensive guide to the typifications of the plant names described by Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778).