News

197 results

197 results

Life and Death on Pangea
In January 2025, the PBS Eons production team visited our colleagues at the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) to film segments for their series, Life and Death on Pangea. That visit is now available on PBS with the first two episodes of the series...
EONS cover screen, PBS Digital Studios

New Publication - Nature, Literature and Culture
For several years, Jonathan Locke Hart has been an Associate of the Harvard University Herbaria. His scholarly interests span poetry, cultural history, and science, bringing together disciplines that are too often treated separately. In his recent book...
cover of book

New Publication - Two new species of Annonaceae
Zacky Ezedin, former HUH Research Fellow and current Associate, has a new publication in Candollea highlighting some of the work he completed on the flora of Papua New Guinea while at the HUH. Ezedin uncovered two striking new plant species in the...
Goniothalamus metadoxus Ezedin

State of the World’s Plants and Fungi

Harvard University Herbaria is one of 170+ institutions in 40 countries contributing to Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew’s 2026 State of the World’s Plants and Fungi [PDF] report. The report explores how new technology is transforming the race to save nature...
Digitising plants at Kew

Collection Spotlight – Friedrich Eser’s Dysodil Fossils
In the spring of 2024, while deciding which portion of the HUPB collection to inventory and rehouse next, the paleo team came across a set of very unusual specimens preserved in a sediment called dysodil. These specimens were similar to paper shales –...
Removing mold (left) and dust (right) from the surface of the specimens and the cardboard.

Specimen Spotlight - The Farlow "Thousand-Dollar Specimens"
Swedish zoologist and ethnographer Eric Georg Mjöberg, seeking sources of funding for a 1925 expedition to Borneo, approached the Farlow Herbarium for a grant in return for all specimens of cryptogams (spore-producing "plants"; this outdated category...
specimen sheet with Cryphaea_borneensis, labels, ruler, annotations

Following in Fernald's Footsteps
Harvard botanist Merritt L. Fernald made many collecting trips to Virginia between 1934 & 1947 as part of his work on the 8th edition of Gray's Manual of Botany. On one occasion he wrote about Southeastern Virginia: In spite of almost complete clearing...
news article

New Publication - Genomic Analysis of Pedicularis furbishiae
Postdoctoral Fellow Dawson White has led the publication of the first reference genome and a population genomic analysis of Pedicularis furbishiae, a globally rare plant restricted to dynamic riverbank habitats along the Wolastoq (Saint John) River in...
Furbish’s lousewort (Pedicularis furbishiae Watson) and geographic distributions

Year in Review
The 2024-25 Academic Year was a busy one for the HUH! We welcomed a new Director, Dr. Jeannine Cavender-Bares, celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Farlow, launched the IHerbSpec working group, wished some long-time staff well in their retirements, and...
2025 Annual Report cover featuring Lamprocapnos spectabilis Fukuhara specimen 01155238

New Publication - Next-generation specimen digitization
The International Herbarium Spectral Digitization Working Group (IHerbSpec), led by HUH Director Jeannine Cavender-Bares and HUH Research Fellow Dawson White, have published a Tansley Review in New Phytologist establishing a scalable, replicable framework...
Herbarium spectral digitization workflow