The Herbarium (RNG) is a research and teaching facility, containing around 400,000 specimens of flowering plants, conifers, cycads, ferns, lycophytes and non-vascular plants.
Founded in 1897, Herbarium RNG incorporates RU (Department of Agricultural Botany, University of Reading), SPN (Previously the University of Southampton Herbarium) and WRO (Weed herbarium of the Long Ashton Research Station, Bristol).
Herbarium RNG receives visitors and requests for identification help from all over the world and houses extensive collections of plants, especially from Europe, the Mediterranean, temperate South America and the UK.
The herbarium is used to teach a range of undergraduate modules as well as to support the MSc in Plant Diversity and MSc in Species Identification and Survey Skills.
The herbarium remains active in acquisitions and the Herbarium exchange programme. We are a CITES registered organisation (GB 016) and a member of the International Plant Exchange Network (IPEN code RNG).