Global Plants Project
Scanned high resolution image of the maple Acer macrophyllum collected in the San Bernardino Mts. of California in May, 1888
Anna Ruggirello ('13) scans specimens for the Global Plants project
Contributor and active participant in JSTOR Global Plants (formerly JSTOR Plant Science), a community of over 300 museums from 80 countries that are building a world-wide online database that features more than two million high resolution plant type specimen images and other foundational materials from the collections of hundreds of herbaria around the world. It is an essential resource for institutions supporting research and teaching in botany, ecology, and conservation studies. Through Global Plants, herbaria can share specimens, experts can determine and update naming structures, students can discover and learn about plants in context, and a record of plant life can be preserved for future generations. As of the end of 2015, the Notre Dame herbarium had captured over 10,500 high-resolution images, including 8,656 images of scientifically important types in our Greene-Nieuwland Herbarium. This places Notre Dame as 3rd largest educational institution contributor in the United States, just below Harvard University (with 2 large separate collections), and the University of Michigan, Notre Dame's collection ranks 7th of contributing institutions in the US (including the Smithsonian Institution, Field Museum, New York Botanical Garden, and Philadelphia Academy collections), and 42nd of all participating collections in the world. Notre Dame's effort in this project has been funded by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant.
Users with workstations on the Notre Dame campus have access to JSTOR Global Plants high resolution images through a University Libraries’ subscription. Others also can access this site, but can view only low resolutions images.