The Brown University Herbarium was founded in 1869 when the University acquired the collections of the Providence Franklin Society and Stephen Thayer Olney. Currently, the herbarium includes around 100,000 plant specimens and is an important depository of Rhode Island and New England collections from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is also rich in western and southern North American plants and includes special sets of historically valuable specimens from early western US expeditions.

The Herbarium is located in the Biomedical Center where the collections are housed in a climate controlled space designed to conform to modern standards.

With funding from the NSF digitization TCN collaborate grant “Mobilizing New England vascular plant specimen data to track environmental changes,” we are currently digitizing our specimens so, in addition to in-person visits, anyone with an internet connection will be able to consult Brown’s collection.