Herbarium Overview

The PE herbarium is located at the foot of beautiful Xiangshan mountain. It is Asia's largest herbaria,covers an area of ​​about 10,000 square meters, its collection of plant specimens are about more than 2.6 million, including 180,000 pteridophyta specimens, 200,000 bryophytes specimens,80,000 seed samples and 70,000 plant fossils. According to statistics, the herbarium's collection of specimens covers approximately 80% of all higher plants in China.The herbarium also keep with more than 17,000 type specimens which published more than 6,000 taxa. Our botanical collection can be viewed and searched through the database

To enhance communication and to share information with the world, a program to digitize the PE herbarium was initiated in 1999. The digitized information includes collection data and images of specimens. At the moment, we have digitized 1.8 million specimens incl. 17,000 types as well as the reference materials, 1.6 million images, and the rate of digitization has reached about 70%. In addition, PE herbarium has also set up the Information Management System, which integrates all the information of the specimens collection, identification, plant images and geography distribution, and allows to be queried and analyzed quickly and exactly.

There is a long tradition of public access for the purposes of propaganda and education in PE, and this herbarium has made important contributions to increase public knowledge and understanding of the value and vital importance of plants. Every year, we received near thousands of different visitors, from the visiting public to enthusiastic gardeners, professional scientists and horticulturalists. In addition, we usually provide the services about the specimen identification, and responses to counseling about botanic science for the community.