Colonialism has shaped scientific plant collections around the world – here’s why that matters

Photo caption: Digitizing plants preserved in the herbarium at La Sapienza University in Rome. Photo credit: Mimmo Frassineti / AGF / Universal Images Group via Getty Images. Article by Daniel Park. The Conversation – June 12, 2023.

Some of the world’s most popular museums are natural history collections: Think of dinosaur fossils, gemstones and preserved animals. Herbaria – collections of pressed, dried plant specimens – are a less-known but important type of natural history collection. There are some 400 million botanical specimens stored across over 3,500 herbaria around the world, but most are not widely publicized and rarely host public exhibits. […]

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