Herbarium Collections

The University of Reading Herbarium is based around major collecting efforts in Europe and the Mediterranean basin and around the world, especially southern South America. The herbarium dates to 1900 and has around 300,000 specimens. It is listed on Index Herbariorum as RNG, and now incorporates several other herbaria: RU, WRO, SOTON, SPN which compliment our existing holdings. It forms part of the University of Reading museums, collections and archives but is funded and hosted within the School of Biological Sciences.

The collections form the basis of the publication of Flora Europea and the Euro+Med checklist, very extensive temperate South American specimens were used for the Transecta Botanica Patagonica and Flora of the Falkland Islands as well as other historic U.K. collections including those of J.E. Louseley. As well as these there are more general teaching and research collections that reflect the research activities of Biological Sciences and, before that the departments of Botany and Agricultural Botany since 1900.

We are an actively curated collection and accession about 1000 new specimens per year making our holdings particularly useful for modern DNA based studies. At present we are adding the very well documented Cyclamen Society collections which complement our Mediterranean basin activities. We participate actively in specimen exchange schemes in areas of interest to us.