Search Herbarium Specimens
Specimen portals are user-friendly, web-based data access technologies that aid taxonomists, field biologists, ecologists, educators, and citizen scientists in the study of biodiversity. The data are derived from networks of universities, botanical gardens, museums, and agencies that provide taxonomic, environmental, and specimen-based information. The digital collections of the UNC Herbarium are housed in the the following portals but please note that we are still actively cataloging our collections, so records may be incomplete.
SERNEC – Vascular Plants
SouthEast Regional Network of Expertise & Collections (SERNEC), a consortium of over 200 herbaria in 14 states in the southeastern United States of America, provides herbarium specimen images and metadata from one of the most botanically diverse regions of the Earth. SERNEC links it efforts with those of other regional herbarium consortia and with the National Resource for Advancing Ditigitzation of Biodiversity Collections, iDigBio.
Pteridophyte Collections Consortium – Ferns & Fern Allies
Pteridophytes (ferns, lycophytes, and their extinct seed-free relatives) are a diverse group of plants that today comprises approximately 12,000 species and plays a major role in terrestrial ecosystems. Pteridophytes were even more important in the past, especially before the evolution of gymnosperms and flowering plant. Historically, the research communities interested in extant pteridophytes and those studying the fossil ones were largely separate from each other. The Pteridophyte Collections Consortium (PCC) was created to promote the integration of these research communities by bringing together specimen data for both living and fossil pteridophytes.
CNABH – Bryophytes
The Consortium of North American Bryophyte Herbaria (CNABH) was created to serve as a gateway to distributed data resources of interest to the taxonomic and environmental research communities who study the mosses, hornworts, and liverworts of North America.
Macroalgal Herbarium Portal – Algae
Macroalgae are the foundation of many marine, estuarine and freshwater benthic ecosystems and provide food, substrata and protection for a myriad of other aquatic organisms. A number of macroalgal species, including kelp and nori, are grown via aquaculture or harvested from the wild for human food and for extraction of colloids used in cosmetics, food products, and pharmaceuticals. The Macroalgal Herbarium Consortium hosts data from more than 50 herbaria across North America.
MyCoPortal – Fungi
The goal of the Mycology Collections data Portal (MyCoPortal) is to aid taxonomists, field biologists, ecologists, educators, and citizen scientists in the study of fungal diversity. The data is derived from a network of universities, botanical gardens, museums, and agencies that provide specimen-based information about fungi and myxomycetes around the globe.
CNALH – Lichens
The Consortium of North American Lichen Herbaris (CNALH) serves as a gateway to biodiversity data of lichenized fungi throughout North America. It provides access to an array of different resources: herbarium specimen records, field observations, dynamic & static checklists, images, interactive keys, and a taxonomic thesaurus.
