New York Botanical Garden Digitizes Biodiversity History
Sarracenia purpurea L. This fantastic-looking flower is special for NYBG—it was the two-millionth specimen digitized. It's commonly known as the purple pitcher plant (great alliteration) and was collected in Duchess County, New York. New York Botanical Garden C. V. Starr Virtual Herbarium Click here to enter the gallery There's a trove of biodiversity information out there, but much of it is locked in natural history collections. To make all this plant data more accessible, the New York Botanical Garden—one of the four largest herbariums in the word—is turning its more than 7.3 million specimens into a browsable digital database. NYBG's herbarium opened its doors around 1900, and from day one, collectors and other private herbaria had already brought in more than 100,000 specimens. New collections continue to come in each year, and curators...