CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (WPTF News) — UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University will unite their herbaria under the management of the North Carolina Botanical Garden in Chapel Hill.
Herbaria are collections of preserved plant specimens that serve as irreplaceable scientific archives and enable researchers to study biodiversity, long-term climate shifts, invasive species and other changes in plant life across generations.
Together the collection will comprise about 1.7 million specimens, making it the third-largest university herbarium in the country after Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley, and the largest in the southeastern United States.
The Botanical Garden, which already manages the UNC-Chapel Hill Herbarium, is dedicated to the conservation and study of plants of the southeastern United States, making it well positioned to preserve and expand access to the combined collection for future generations.
Plants are fundamental to all life on Earth, supporting countless other species and providing clean air, water, food and medicine that sustain all life. Safeguarding these plants is essential for human well-being, and herbaria help scientists track and protect plant biodiversity by documenting where species grow and how they change over time.
“The preservation of plant biodiversity will shape human well-being for generations to come,” said Damon Waitt, director of the North Carolina Botanical Garden. “This consolidation will preserve a scientific legacy dating back to 1802, keep the combined collection a vital resource for studying plant diversity in the Southeast, and ensure it continues to advance our understanding of plant life as new tools transform plant research.”
Duke announced plans in 2024 to relocate its herbarium after determining that its outdated facilities would require years of work and extensive disruption to the collection.
“Duke’s Herbarium is a highly valuable research collection that has been expertly curated and studied by Duke faculty, staff and students as well as many scholars beyond campus,” said Amy Herring, dean of Natural Sciences at Duke. “This agreement will keep Duke’s Herbarium intact and locally accessible to scientists, curators and students, as well as the citizens of the state and region.”
The Duke collection will initially be housed in two floors of the former Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center in Chapel Hill. Carolina has a long-term plan to build a dedicated Plant Biodiversity Research Center to accommodate the Duke collection and the UNC-Chapel Hill collection, which has exceeded the storage capacity of its campus home at Coker Hall.
Work to upfit Frank Porter Graham has already begun, and the Duke collection is expected to move there in June 2027. The consolidation is among a growing number of partnerships between the two universities, including the Robertson Scholars program, the Carolina-Duke Core Partnership in research and the North Carolina Children’s Health campus.
In recent years, herbarium specimens have helped scientists document how species have responded to long-term climate shifts, the spread of invasive species and changes in land use.
As scientists increasingly use AI, digitization and DNA sequencing to study plant life, herbaria are becoming even more valuable as physical records, helping researchers identify species, compare traits and better understand how plants have changed over time.