University of Michigan Herbarium

The University of Michigan Herbarium is the herbarium of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in the United States. One of the most-extensive botanical collections in the world, the herbarium has some 1.7 million specimens of vascular plants, algae, bryophytes, fungi, and lichens, and is a valuable resource for teaching and research in biology and botany. The herbarium includes many rare and extinct species.

Formerly an independent unit of the University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA), the herbarium is now part of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology within LSA. The herbarium is located at 3600 Varsity Drive in Ann Arbor.

The Herbarium funds one Graduate Museum Assistant annually. It also has since 1977 awarded the annual Kenneth L. Jones Award to an outstanding plant sciences undergraduate at the University of Michigan.

The Herbarium's collection was established in 1837. Dr. Asa Gray was appointed Professor of Botany and Zoology in 1838. Collections were moved to the Main Building (later Mason Hall) in 1841. The first published research paper based on the university's botanical holdings came in 1876, when a paper by Professor Mark W. Harrington was published in the Journal of the Linnean Society.

Mycologist Alexander H. Smith spent his entire career at the University of Michigan Herbarium, and was its longtime director.

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