Denver Botanic Gardens Herbaria and Special Collections
Item
Title
Denver Botanic Gardens Herbaria and Special Collections
Description
The Kathryn Kalmbach Herbarium: Contains approximately 48,000 vascular plant specimens. Many unprocessed, backlogged specimens are waiting to be entered into the collection. Further, we annually add 700 to 1,000 new specimens to the collection through our floristic inventories and other types of field research as well as through the exchange of specimens with other institutions. Our collection primarily documents the flora of Colorado and the Southern Rocky Mountain region which includes Southern Wyoming and Northern New Mexico. The varied topography of our state supports a very diverse flora composed of over 3,000 species of vascular plants. The Colorado flora is greatly influenced by adjacent geographic regions as varied as the Desert Southwest, the Great Basin, the Great Plains, and the Pacific Northwest. As a result, we share species with our neighboring states and disjunct populations with those far away. These holdings are significant in that they not only represent present- day geographical relationships but also those from the geologic past. Our collections are from different time periods in Western history, reflect the species composition of different habitats, and vouch for many different types of scientific study. Our earliest collections date from the 1800s not long after Colorado statehood. We house the Waring Collection that documents the flora of Historic Denver. We also have collections of Kathryn Kalmbach.
Program
Date
Temporal Coverage
1524 - 2010
Spatial Coverage
Principally Colorado and the Southern Rocky Mountain Region, also the Western United States & relevant literature world-wide. This includes mycology.
Extent
0 boxes
202 cubic feet
18 linear feet
88650 objects
Institution
Identifier
Primary Contact
April Miller