Plant Samples Preserved in Museums May Hold Key To Advancing Biodiversity

A single dried flower pressed flat on a page of white cardboard is a plant sample made using very old technology. People have been collecting these types of samples since the 1600s.

Armed with very new technology, such as artificial intelligence and genomic sequencing, Stanford biologist Barnabas Daru sees tremendous opportunity in studying these collections that span centuries.

Researchers could potentially harvest a wealth of information from the millions of samples housed in the world’s 3,000 herbaria, what Daru calls “museums for plants.” The data could help identify long-term trends in plant growth and yield insights on our own rapidly changing environment.

“So much data on plants are captured in herbarium specimens, but they are untapped and unused,” said Daru, assistant professor of biology in Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences. “It’s the perfect time to explore these resources that have been hidden away in storage cabinets. Given the new technologies that are available, we can really use the specimens to understand plant biodiversity in new and exciting ways.”