McGill Herbarium

The McGill University Herbarium is an important repository of Canada's biodiversity.

 

Thanks to the efforts of many people over the past 200 years, the herbarium has become the home to over 140,000 pressed plants, with strong arctic, subarctic, and North American collections. Sedges and other grasslike plants are particularly well represented. Many collections date from the mid-nineteenth century and document places that are now very urban and hold particular significance to Canadian environmental history.

 

The herbarium is also an educational resource for plant identification and specimen vouchering for the McGill community and records the plant diversity of McGill's many nature reserves.

 

Our collection of library books can be found in the library catalog. Please contact the frieda.beauregard [at] mcgill.ca (curator) if you would like to voucher your specimens or make use of the collections for your research.

 

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a cotton flower herbarium specimen

Many of the earliest Canadian plant collectors contributed to the McGill University herbarium, making it a unique historical record and providing a window into our botanical past. Image of a cotton plant grown circa 1820, collection location unknown.

trees in front of a large rock

Ever wanted to walk through the park and know the names of all the trees? Our guide to the trees of the Montreal region is a great place to start.

A pink rose bush in bloom

Volunteers and staff have been working to make our specimens and their information freely available virtually. So far about 20,000 specimens have been digitized and shared.

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