Welcome to the Herbarium
The Museum of Southwestern Biology houses New Mexico’s largest herbarium and oldest division within the museum. An herbarium is a collection of preserved plants stored, catalogued, and arranged for study by professionals and amateurs from many walks of life. Our main focus is to document and preserve the flora of New Mexico. We have over 132,000 vascular plant specimens, 4,500 bryophyte specimens and a growing tissue library; most of these collections are from New Mexico and the southwestern U.S. Our primary international holdings are from Mexico.
Even as the fourth most botanically diverse state in the country, we are relatively unexplored and species new to science are still being discovered, documented, and described. This herbarium is the most extensive plant collection for our fifth largest state and consists of 390 plant families, 1914 genera, and over 7700 species. The majority of our specimens are flowering plants from the Southwest, with an emphasis on vascular plants from New Mexico. Lesser represented groups include ferns, fern allies, lichens, fungi, and mosses. The Herbarium also has a type collection as well as pollen and seed reference collections. Lastly, we have a teaching collection, that contains unmounted specimens and mounted specimens, available for use, in addition to a watercolor collection from Ora Clark. Our collections are used by scientists, plant enthusiasts, artists, archaeologists, anthropologists, geologists, and, occasionally for uses we don’t anticipate. It is interesting that, after over 100 years, the potential uses of this collection are still unfolding and answering questions we never could have anticipated.
The University of New Mexico Herbarium acknowledges that our collection resides on unceded ancestral lands of Tiwa (Sandia) Pueblo peoples, and neighboring Tribal Nations. We honor and respect the relationship that has existed between its indigenous inhabitants and this land and commit to continuing to learn how to be better stewards of this land. We also acknowledge the colonial nature that has dominated natural history collections that is maintained in our own collection and are working to educate ourselves on best practives moving forward.
Disclaimer: Collection records at the UNM Herbaria (UNM) may contain language that reflects historical place or taxon names in an original form that is no longer acceptable or appropriate in an inclusive environment. Because UNM preserves data in their original form to retain authenticity and facilitate research, we have chosen to facilitate conversations and are committed to address the problem of racial, derogatory and demeaning language that may be found in our database. Insensitive or offensive language is not condoned by UNM. Some of these specimens are flagged in our database with content warnings, however you may come upon a specimen requiring flagging, please contact our Collections Manager directly if you come upon content of this sort.
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Click here to view our 2023 Annual Report.
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Click here to view our 2022 Annual Report.
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Our specimens are fully searchable through our online database Seinet.
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The Herbarium has unique volunteer opportunites.
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A list of publications that cite our herbarium specimens or were authored by Division staff and associates is kept up to date on our Google Scholar profile.
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Help support the Herbarium.
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