Botany

The Yale Herbarium

The Yale Herbarium in the Yale Peabody Museum’s Division of Botany is an internationally recognized repository. It holds approximately 350,000 plant specimens from throughout the world, but mainly from North America, especially Connecticut and New England, and includes over 7,000 type specimens. It also contains historically important materials from early botanical collectors and was the herbarium of record for the flora of southern New England from 1864 until 1955, when that function passed to the University of Connecticut at Storrs. The Connecticut Botanical Society herbarium is housed alongside the Yale Herbarium.

Research in the Botany Collections

The Yale University Herbarium collections are maintained with the goal of balancing preservation of the integrity of specimens with their use for scientific research. While every effort is made to accommodate researchers, decisions on destructive sampling are case-by-case. No samples may be removed without the consent of the curator or collections manager and, when given, is contingent on adherence to Division of Botany’s Policy on the Destructive Sampling of Herbarium specimens.

View policy document

The Peabody’s curatorial divisions are governed by the Museum’s collections policies and best practices document. Collections are available to researchers for scholarly use and loans are issued to individuals at established institutions. Loans and access can be arranged through the curatorial division’s collections manager.

For general information on objects in this collection, including identifications, contact the Yale Peabody Museum Department of Education at peabody.education@yale.edu.

Department Contact

Curators & Divisional Staff