Botany

Contact Us Botany Department
Trinity College
Dublin 2
Ireland

View the contact page for more contact and location information

zoobot@tcd.ie Gaeilge

Digitisation and Imaging

Digitisation and imaging allow us to produce high resolution images of our specimens, associated with high quality data. Together these processes allow us to search and work with our collections in novel ways, and to allow us to share our data with botanists worldwide, in partial fulfilment of our commitment to data repatriation under the Convention on Biological Diversity.

In September 2024, the herbarium installed a state-of-the-art digitisation suite courtesy of funding from the National Parks and Wildlife Service under the project Transforming Trinity’s Herbarium. This funding runs until 2031 and will allow us to image and fully database our herbarium collections, and to share the data online. 

To date we have minimally databased our entire British and Irish Vascular Plant collections (c.20k specimens). We are now proceeding to minimally database and image selected families in the World Vascular Plant collections. Prior to the project, we also databased and imaged all known type collections with funding from the Mellon Foundation, as well as specimens of known historical and scientific interest. 

Our data will soon be shared online on a new collections database, which will go live by the end of 2025.  We will also be sharing our data with data aggregators including, but not limited to, GBIF, Flora do Brasil, and the Atlas of Living Australia. 

If you are interested in receiving data or images on specific families, genera, or species, please contact the curator Dr Peter Moonlight. 

The herbarium has also undertaken several significant imaging projects in the past. All recognised type specimens and specimens of particular historical interest have been imaged with funding from the Mellon Foundation. These are available through JStor plants or via a direct request to the herbarium curator.

Imaging has allowed easy access to certain materials such as Harvey's Travelling Sets of Algae. These specimens are never sent on loan as they consist of bound volumes each containing historically valuable material of many species. The following paper gives details of this collection. Parnell, J.A.N., Womersley, H.B.S., Sinkora, D., Vaughan, A. & Huisman, J.M. (2010). W.H. Harvey's Australian Travelling Sets of Algae in the Herbarium of Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and the National Herbarium of Victoria (MEL). Biology and Environment (Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy), 110B: 119-161.

As you will see from this document Harvey's Travelling Sets of Algae originate from Ceylon, the Friendly Islands and Australia. There are seven books of specimens from Australia and one each from Ceylon and the Friendly Islands.

  • A searchable pdf table which details the collections in the Ceylonese book is available to download here (PDF, 32KB)
  • A searchable pdf table which details the collections in the Friendly Islands book is available to download here (PDF, 46KB)
  • A single searchable pdf table which details the collections in the seven Australian books is available to download here (PDF,156KB)

Please email comments and corrections to these tables to John Parnell with the Heading 'Travelling Sets'. Note that these Indices are copyright and should be cited as follows:

Our collections contain historic materials which may contain terminology which is inappropriate, outdated, offensive, or distressing. Such material does not reflect the current values of Trinity College Dublin. We further note that the values, motives, and methods of many collectors whose material we host do not satisfy our values or modern best practices. 

We would welcome feedback about the language or any other aspect of the content of our collections. While we cannot change certain data associated with our collections (e.g. species names), we will consider all requests for changes to any other aspects of our collection data.