Post from Herbarium World on the Future of the Biodiversity Heritage Library herbariumworld.wordpress.com/2026/05/25/a... @biodivlibrary.bsky.social

Post from Herbarium World on BHL's image collection: herbariumworld.wordpress.com/2026/05/18/a... @biodivlibrary.bsky.social

#WorldBeeDay! How can we plant better for bees? Bees can best see the colour purple, so plants like lavender, alliums, and catmint work great! And although herbarium specimens don't really show colour well - below are examples of Allium, Lavandula and Nepeta from Smith's and LInnaeus' Herbariums.

Meet the mayflower (Epigaea repens), the state flower of Massachusetts! This low-growing woodland plant is famous for its sweet fragrance and delicate spring flowers. #Wildflowers

This stunning illustration of Pajanelia longifolia, from Kew's Library and Archives, was painted around 1820 by the artist Vishnupersaud. You can see it on show at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, as part of 'In Bloom: How Plants Changed Our World' until 16 August 2026. #KewLA

Johanna Helena Herolt (5/1/1668-1723), 18th-century German botanical artist & the oldest daughter of Maria Sibylla Merian. She and her sister Dorothea Maria Graff were both artists. Johanna married in 1692; she had two children but Johanna continued to take commissions. youtu.be/X88P7icxpsU?...

We're absolutely thrilled to welcome @sgn.one as a new member of the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Stay tuned for a BHL blog post with more information about their wonderful collection materials that will soon be freely accessible via www.biodiversitylibrary.org. 🧪 🇩🇪 🦋

Illustration: The Fan Gorgonia or Venus’ Fan, Gorgonia flabellum from The Naturalist's Miscellany by George Shaw. Illustrated by Frederick Polydore Nodder (1790): www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/59891468

At Herbarium World, the first in a series of posts on the relationship between the dual anniversaries of the Declaration of Independence and Biodiversity Heritage Library herbariumworld.wordpress.com/2026/05/04/a... @biodivlibrary.bsky.social

There are only a few more days to see our small but perfectly formed display on the botanical illustrator Stella Ross Craig - a titan amongst scientific artists of the 20th Century. You can see some of the materials she used to produce her meticulous plant studies, such as this paint palette #KewLA

An important thread. Perhaps also worth adding that it is an issue with commercial resources too; some morph beyond recognition (or usefulness), or are merged with other things, thereby losing nuance, and others are axed. This certainly applies to the digital publishing projects I worked on.

Post from Herbarium World on an 18th-century materia medica cabinet herbariumworld.wordpress.com/2026/04/27/c... @cuherb.bsky.social

This is just so bad, in so many ways.

In 1714 James Sherard and James Petiver went on a plant-collecting tour of Sussex and Kent. This is a specimen of Myrica gale (Bog-myrtle) collected "About Tundridge Wells", which Petiver's diary shows was gathered 16 August 1714 (OS) 1/2 @bsbibotany.bsky.social @nhm-london.bsky.social

📔 Explore BHL’s newest oldest item! In our #BHLat20 series, we’re highlighting Circa Instans (c. 1190), now the oldest work in BHL, predating the previous oldest item by 300 years. From the @nybg.bsky.social’s Mertz Library, now online: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2026/04/circ...

Post from Herbarium World on the work of botanical historian Richard Field herbariumworld.wordpress.com/2026/04/13/c...

A great article about the value of historical herbarium specimens.

Timelea / Thymelaea, c. 1631, by #GiovannaGarzoni (Italian, 1600-1670). F.39 (seq. 88), Piante Varie, c. 1650, held at the @dumbartonoaks.bsky.social Research Library, doaks.org/resources/ra... #hernaturalhistory #womenbotanicalartists #artherstory #womenartists #InternationalPlantAppreciationDay

A white-flowered form of Common Knapweed from "Esqr Daeths grounds" in the Hortus Siccus Anglicanus of London apothecary James Petiver (NHM HS151 f. 136). His journal shows this was gathered at Knowlton, Kent, 22 August 1714 (OS). #wildflowerhour @kentfieldclub.bsky.social @nhm-london.bsky.social

This week starts a series of posts on people I've "met" through social media, in this post it's physician, medical researcher, and essayist Edward Tabor herbariumworld.wordpress.com/2026/04/06/c...

This is one more reason why herbaria are exciting!!

Happy 20th Anniversary! As a taxonomist, I am incredibly grateful for your existence. I access your information nearly on a daily basis for several different projects including #ColeopteraDeColombia. The #Biodiversity world would not be the same without you! Cheers! #BHLat20 #ILoveBHL

Another day, another “uncovered” archive. The materials “have been stored in Cambridge University’s herbarium for nearly 200 years.” The course sounds great, but this Indiana Jones framing and erasure of archivists’ work is getting really tired.

Whoever wrote the description that accompanies the herbarium did a wonderful job!

Post from Herbarium World on a plant collection made by children in Malta in the 1950s herbariumworld.wordpress.com/2026/03/23/h...

🌻☕️ Just 2 weeks until Specimens & Scones! 🌿 Join us April 8, 3–5pm for scones, coffee & tea + guided tours of our collections. Meet UTK herbarium staff, faculty & students!

It was a pleasure to be interviewed for Botany One and tell some tales about plants and people and plants.

Post from Herbarium World on how herbaria are connected to almost everything, including the abolistionist movement herbariumworld.wordpress.com/2026/03/16/h...

The new issue of the peer-reviewed open access Plant Perspectives Journal @plantperspectives.bsky.social, grounded in interdisciplinary plant studies, is now available online and contains many interesting articles related to plants. Check it out! www.whp-journals.co.uk/PP/

Post from Herbarium World on the "Quire" herbarium of #EmilyDickinson herbariumworld.wordpress.com/2026/03/09/h...

Post from Herbarium World on specimen theft, something you don't hear much about: herbariumworld.wordpress.com/2026/03/02/h...

In the 1850s, before it was denuded by archaeologists and the tourism industry, 420 species of flowers and plants grew on the Roman Colosseum — and every single one is catalogued in amateur botanist Richard Deakin's Flora of the Colosseum of Rome (1855): publicdomainreview.org/collection/r...

I agree that BHL is invaluable to so many studying taxonomy, history, and ART! @biodivlibrary.bsky.social

New DRP post: #Philly interpretive panels returned to the President's House. We congratulate the local community that fought HARD for their return. We hope this inspires other communities to #SaveOurSigns www.datarescueproject.org/independence...

Digitisation as archival intermediary: Quantifying and qualifying Greta B. Stevenson's mycological collector networks 📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... by Kreuzer et al. #PlantScience Image credit: Photography (CK) courtesy Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

From earlier this week: The Herbarium in Three Words. docs.google.com/presentation...

New post from Herbarium World on US moon trees at herbariumworld.wordpress.com/2026/02/23/t... @plantperspectives.bsky.social

One for you @diegothegeographer.bsky.social

🆕 Latest research in @dissco.bsky.social's #openscience collection illustrates a Machine Learning as a Service approach for quantitative analysis of #herbarium #specimens. 🌿 Subsequently, DiSSCO's models are used to calculate surface area of identified #plant organs. 🔓 See: doi.org/10.3897/rio....

The Planellas #Herbarium by José Planellas Giralt includes 2,483 specimens, 1,654 of which feature locality data and are registered in @gbif.org. With most specimens originating from Galicia, Spain, this herbarium served as the foundation for the first systematic #flora of the region. @ub.edu

The smell of old books. ‘Quite a small piece of Fenugreek would make your Bible smell like a ripe cheese.’ Humphrey Gilbert-Carter, Director of @cubotanicgarden.bsky.social to Harry Creswick @theul.bsky.social, identifying a plant in a 15th-century Bible as Helichrysum stoechas. Inc.1.A.7.2[860]

It's official: later this year, I'll join the KB, National Library for a 6-month project on how people have perceived #InvasivePlants in the Netherlands and abroad. Looking forward to the project "Foreigners we love to hate?" 🌱📚🌿

Post from Herbarium World on Plant Perspectives articles on forests and apples herbariumworld.wordpress.com/2026/02/16/t... @plantperspectives.bsky.social

Portrait of Oakes Ames, n.d., by #BlancheAmesAmes (1878–1969), who died #otd, March 2. Source, herbariumworld.wordpress.com/2019/10/07/f... #womenartists #artherstory

The zoology collection in Turin shares the same building as the herbarium, and I thought this was the most beautiful display @zoologymuseum.bsky.social

So true!!! Glad it's not just me.

Can historians benefit from creative works for historical research? In this @hsnatsci.bsky.social short piece, I share how I worked w/ different types of making to research and write my recent book on 17th-c. florilegia. Thank you @dominikhhh.bsky.social & @mbaldwin.bsky.social for the invitation!

With the help of Claude Code I have resurrected a tool to geocode localities using @gbif.org. If you have a locality such as "Cambodia: Ratanakiri Province, Virachey National Park" rdmpage.github.io/gbif-geocoder/ will search for specimens that match that locality and display results on a map.

I'm working on an article about early microscopic observations of ferns and the resulting images. Taking the opportunity, the core team of #VisualizingtheUnknown returned to the Museum Boerhaave yesterday for a MicroLab to observe fern sporangia and spores through early modern microscopes together!