Herbarium & Seed Bank
The Herbarium and Seed Bank are in special buildings away from the main garden on a side service road. The buildings are not normally open to the public. The Herbarium is used by botanists to help identify plants.
Plant Identification
Technology is a real help now with plant identification.
if you have an Apple device and take a photo, it will often tell you what it is in the information tab.
Alternatively, iNaturalist is an excellent tool. we have created a “How to Use iNaturalist” instruction sheet which you can find here.
In the past, people have dropped in samples of plants to the garden, but the weather, and the time it can take to get it to one of our plant specialists, often means samples are beyond recognition before they can be identified. Photographs are a much better option and could be sent in via email and should include location and photos of the entire plant, leaves, flowers and any seeds or fruit.
The Herbarium
A herbarium is a research collection of pressed, dried and labelled plant specimens. It is like a plant library to help botanists and field workers identify plants. The plant collections for the Herbarium were started in 1940 by botanists Alex Floyd, H Hayes and L. Archer. The Herbarium now has a combined collection of over 28,000 specimens and requires a high level of care and maintenance.
Herbarium Geographic range: Primarily NSW North Coast and Tablelands. Herbarium Taxonomic range: Vascular plants, Cryptogams (plants with no true flowers or seed, such as ferns and mosses). In north east New South Wales includes specimens from forest surveys.
The Seed Bank
The seed bank was established at the garden in the 1980s, initially to supply and store seed for producing seedlings to plant in the newly established North Coast Regional Botanic Garden. Many Australian species have been collected, stored and grown for planting. Some seeds were used for specialised Australian plantings – rainforest plantings, the rare and endangered plants garden and the heathland gardens. Seed was also imported and stored in the seed bank from other countries to plant the International Garden Areas.
Over the years the seed bank role has grown to supply native seed from the north coast region to other botanic gardens and to research and conservation organisations in Australian and around the world. While the focus is collecting wild-sourced seed from the NSW North Coast many of original plantings of rainforest and rare and endangered trees in the garden are now mature enough to flower and set seed.
In February 2024, a north coast region wide seed bank project was launched involving Landcare groups from Kempsey to the Tweed to collect native seed, and the botanic garden seed bank facility as the seed storage, testing and seed database host. Local Land Services assisted with funding to establish this project with Landcare groups and provided $25,000 to the Friends of the Garden to assist with an upgrade of the seed bank equipment and to run training workshops. The goal is is to have a region wide native seed resource for the NSW North Coast, covering at least 100 native species of trees, shrubs and grasses, that can provide local native seeds to Landcare and other nurseries growing plants for habitat restoration projects, flood and fire recovery and carbon sequestration.
The Friends have invested to date around $35,000 for the first stage of the seed bank building refurbishment, with more funds to be invested in stage 2 works to provide a more efficient internal climate control system in the seed and herbarium storage areas and fire protection. Thousands of volunteer hours are also being put into this project by the Friends of the Garden.
To learn more about the project and how you can get involved click here
For more information contact the Herbarium and Seed Bank Coordinator via coffsbotanicgarden@gmail.com