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.
[1] 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.
[3] The Herbarium funds one Graduate Museum Assistant annually.
[5] The first published research paper based on the university's botanical holdings came in 1877, when a paper by Professor Mark W. Harrington was published in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society.
[5][6] Mycologist Alexander H. Smith spent his entire career at the University of Michigan Herbarium, and was its longtime director.