Founded in 1874, the Bessey Herbarium is among the oldest and largest in the Great Plains. The collection has more than 300,000 specimens of flower palnts, fungi, lichens, algae, vascular plants, and non-vascular plants from Nebraska, the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, and other parts of North America and Europe.
Explore the Collection
Our team is happy to answer questions related to specific collections or help coordinate access to our collection for research purposes.
We are actively digitizing the UNSM Botany Collection, with over _____ specimens add so far. Many additional specimens (1?) in our collection have yet to be digitized.
Contact Us:
Curator: Todd Widhelm
402-472-6594
Visiting Researchers: Please email unsmbotany@unl.edu to arrange a time for your visit.
Nebraska Collectors
Our collection contains specimens from notable Nebraska scientists like Charles essey, Ernst Bessey, Frederic Clements, Walter Kiener, per Rydberg, Raymond Pool, Jared G. Smith. We also have specimens from Nebraskans who became prominent in other fields: Rosco Pound (Law), Louise Pound (literature), Willa Cather (literature), Melvin Gilmore (ethnobotany), Lawrence Bruner (entomology), and Henry Baldwin Ward (parasitology).
Charles E. Bessey
Learn more about Dr. Charles Edwin Bessey, namesake of the herbarium, who came to the University of Nebraska in l884 to be a professor of botany.