herbarium

American  

[hur-bair-ee-uhm, ur-] / hɜrˈbɛər i əm, ɜr- /

noun

• herbariums,
  plural
• herbaria
  plural

1. a collection of dried plants systematically arranged.

2. a room or building in which such a collection is kept.

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herbarium British  

/ hɜːˈbɛərɪəm /

noun

1. a collection of dried plants that are mounted and classified systematically

2. a building, room, etc, in which such a collection is kept

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• herbarial
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• herbaria
  plural
• herbariums
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of herbarium

1770–80; < Late Latin, equivalent to Latin herb ( a ) herb, green vegetation + -ārium -arium

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Explanation

A herbarium is a collection of preserved plants. Think of it as a library of herbs. A herbarium can be something as simple as that book of pressed flowers you made at summer camp, or as complex as a building that holds case after case of flowers soaked in formaldehyde, dried moss stored in archival quality envelopes, and cones from conifers organized in boxes. Find these larger collections at universities, botanical gardens, and natural history museums.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

herbarium herbaria herbariums

However, after the museum's original herbarium was damaged during World War Two, the space was repurposed to house the botanical collections and closed to the public.

From BBC ● Aug. 22, 2026

Rousseau’s unfinished, unstructured “Reveries” resembles the herbarium in which he gathered a botanical record of his daily walks.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 2, 2026

His work is based in MSU's herbarium, housing approximately 38,000 vascular plant specimens from around the world with an emphasis on the Southeastern U.S.

From Science Daily ● May 29, 2024

The team instead applied new genomic methods that allow ready sequencing of nuclear DNA from herbarium specimens, they reported on 24 April in Nature.

From Science Magazine ● Apr. 24, 2024

Trucks carry off skeletons and meteorites and octopi in jars and herbarium sheets and Egyptian gold and South African ivory and Permian fossils.

From "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr

This intensive fieldwork resulted in over a thousand new specimens deposited at the National Herbarium of Canada at the Canadian Museum of Nature and other herbaria worldwide.

From Science Daily ● Mar. 12, 2024

Studies of animal and plant specimens in museum and herbaria collections can uncover some of these dark extinctions.

From Salon ● May 31, 2023

“There are undoubtedly more undescribed extinct species sitting in herbaria, collected 100 years ago.”

From New York Times ● Oct. 16, 2020

Botanists have been identifying and naming plants collected there since the 17th century, with samples stored in herbaria around the world.

From BBC ● Aug. 6, 2020

In public herbaria, the advantage of a uniform size for all plants supersedes all other advantages, but in a private herbarium, consisting entirely of fungi, the smaller size is better.

From Fungi: Their Nature and Uses by M. C. (Mordecai Cubitt) Cooke

The world’s herbariums contain a vast number of varieties that have yet to be genetically tested.

From New York Times ● Apr. 12, 2018

Mr. Muñoz-Rodríguez and his colleagues visited museums and herbariums around the world to take samples of sweet potato varieties and wild relatives.

From New York Times ● Apr. 12, 2018

Tell us all about flowers and plants for herbariums.

From Harper's Round Table, May 21, 1895 by Various

The sole decoration of the four rooms on the ground floor, which composed his lodgings, consisted of framed herbariums, and engravings of the old masters.

From Les Misérables by Isabel Florence Hapgood

Specimens of this grass were sent to Kew and Calcutta herbariums for identification and they were named C. montana, with which I could not agree.

From A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses by K. Rangachari

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