News and Highlights

Highlights

The Botany Digitization Conveyor hits 2 million scans!  

After three years of production, we are excited to announce that the Botany Digitization Conveyor Belt has reached 2 million scans of botanical specimens this December 2018.    This number also coincides with the transcription of 1.5 million conveyor specimen images. Total number of inventoried specimens from the US Herbarium has now reached over 3 million records, and can be found in our online catalog (https://collections.nmnh.si.edu/search/botany/). 

Past Events

Smithsonian Botanical Symposium - The Department of Botany and the United States Botanic Garden convened the 2019 Smithsonian Botanical Symposium, “What Darwin Couldn't Know: Modern Perspectives on Crop Plant Origins,” held at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., on May 17, 2019. 

The 17th Smithsonian Botanical Symposium highlighted current research into the domestication of crops and their wild relatives as well as ornamental plants. Speakers included archaeobotanists, botanists, geneticists, and paleoethnobotanists utilizing molecular and genomic tools unknown to Darwin. 

For previous symposia, see the Smithsonian Botanical Symposium Archive.

News and Highlights

Newsletter  -- The Plant Press is the quarterly newsletter from the Department of Botany and the U.S. National Herbarium. The purpose of The Plant Press is to provide information about the activities of the Department. Included are articles about staff research and travel, visitors, new publications, and plant conservation highlights.