Botany Collection

How many different plants can you name?

 

According to the Royal Botanic Gardens in the United Kingdom, there are 391,000 species of vascular plants currently known to science! Botany is the study of plants, and botanists collect herbarium specimens to study things such as where certain plants grow and how they can be conserved. These specimens are preserved by drying and flattening on sheets of paper, along with scientific data about where and when they were collected.

 

While many botanists are professionals, amateurs can also make contributions to science. This herbarium was collected by amateur botanist Lance Farrell in the 1970s and 1980s from locations across the U.S.