The Collections

The main collections at BRIT, our botanical library and herbarium, are core. The institute, literally, was built around them. The herbarium now holds about one million plant specimens from around the world, safely stored in our state-of-the-art facility. There is ample space and excellent lighting for the work of researchers.

Our botanical library houses about 130,000 volumes that deal mostly with the classification and evolution of plants. There are also volumes dealing with horticulture, cultivation, and uses. Additionally, the library is rich in important and useable historic volumes such as Carolus Linnaeus’s Species Plantarum, the publication that marked the beginning of botany’s current scientific naming scheme.