McGill University Herbarium
Macdonald Campus of McGill University
21111 Lakeshore Rd.
Ste.-Anne-de-Bellevue, Québec, H9X-3V9
Please contact the Curator.
The McGill College Herbarium was founded in 1856 with the gift by Holmes and Dawson of their private plant collections, and was located in Redpath Hall. Since then, the collection has steadily grown, with donations from expeditions across Canada, the Arctic, and from as far off as Fiji and the Falkland Islands. Half a century later, the Macdonald College Herbarium was established as a teaching collection of Eastern Canadian flora. Under the curatorship of Dr. Dorothy Swales in the 1930s, the Macdonald collection accumulated many rare and interesting specimens from Siberia, Lapland, Greenland and the Canadian Arctic, some of which are presently only available at the Herbarium. In 1972, the McGill Herbarium collection was moved and combined with the Macdonald College Herbarium.
The McGill University Herbarium presently comprises over 130,000 specimens and maintains an active program of research and exchange. Maintained by the Department of Plant Science of McGill University, it is located on Macdonald Campus, in the Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Its main function is to collect, preserve and catalogue plant specimens for research and teaching of plant systematics and biogeography. With an extensive collection dating back about 180 years, it documents variations in plant structure and distribution, and provides access to species that today are extinct or inaccessible.
Waterway, M. J. 1987. The McGill University Herbarium: The development of Québec’s eminent herbarium. Collection Forum 3: 21-22.
The McGill University Herbarium is located in the Raymond Building of Macdonald Campus, Room R1-037-8