Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh Digitizes Herbarium Collection.
The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) is making significant strides in digitizing its extensive Herbarium collection, which contains over three million preserved plant specimens from 157 countries.
This collection, once difficult to access, is now being transformed into high-resolution digital images, allowing anyone with an internet connection to view the specimens.
Since launching the digital platform, RBGE has received requests from students, scientists, and plant enthusiasts worldwide.
Notably, the one millionth specimen to be digitized is Stereocaulon vesuvianum, a type of lichen collected from Ben Nevis in 2021. Dr. Rebecca Yahr, a lichenologist at RBGE who gathered the specimen during her climb of Scotland’s tallest mountain, expressed her excitement: “Celebrating the milestone with this important specimen is an exciting opportunity for us to highlight Scotland’s unique biodiversity and extend RBGE’s mission to research and understand lichens more generally.”
The collection of the millionth specimen was part of RBGE’s involvement in the Darwin Tree of Life (DToL) project, which aims to unlock DNA sequences of every complex living organism in Great Britain and Ireland.
Professor Olwen Grace, Curator of the Herbarium and leader of the digitization project, emphasized the importance of this initiative: “Being able to share this information with scientific communities as well as the public allows us to develop a more robust understanding of biodiversity challenges and the solutions that can help us build resilience to shifting climates.”