The State Herbarium of South Australia, sometimes called the South Australian Herbarium, and having the herbarium code, AD, is located in

Adelaide Adelaide ( ) is the capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater Adelaide (including the Adelaide Hills) or the Adelaide city centre. The dem ...

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...

. It is one of several State and Commonwealth

herbaria A herbarium (plural: herbaria) is a collection of preserved plant specimens and associated data used for scientific study. The specimens may be whole plants or plant parts; these will usually be in dried form mounted on a sheet of paper (called ...

in Australia. The

Department for Environment and Water The Department for Environment and Water (DEW) is a department of the Government of South Australia. Created on 1 July 2012 by the merger of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the Department for Water as the Department of ...

is the state agency which is responsible for the Herbarium, but the Board of the Botanic Gardens and State Herbarium (established by an Act of Parliament, most recently the ''Botanic Gardens and State Herbarium Act 1978'') is charged with its establishment and maintenance. The herbarium is responsible for Electronic Flora of South Australia. It also produces the journal, ''Swainsona'' (formerly ''Journal of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens'').

History

In 1954 the State Herbarium of South Australia was founded as part of the

Adelaide Botanic Garden The Adelaide Botanic Garden is a public garden at the north-east corner of the Adelaide city centre, in the Adelaide Park Lands. It encompasses a fenced garden on North Terrace, Adelaide, North Terrace (between Lot Fourteen, the site of the old ...

. The first flora collection of the state was produced by

Richard Schomburgk Moritz Richard Schomburgk (5 October 1811 – 24 March 1891), generally known as Richard Schomburgk, was a German botanist and curator of the Adelaide Botanic Garden. Family Schomburgk was born in Freyburg, Saxony, the son of Johann Friedrich L ...

(1811–1891) in 1875. The State Herbarium's collections include collections of

Ralph Tate Ralph Tate (11 March 1840 – 20 September 1901) was a British-born botanist and geologist, who was later active in Australia. Early life Tate was born at Alnwick in Northumberland, the son of Thomas Turner Tate (1807–1888), a teacher of m ...

John McConnell Black John McConnell Black (28 April 1855 – 2 December 1951) was a Scottish botanist who emigrated to Australia in 1877 and eventually documented and illustrated thousands of flora in South Australia in the early 20th century. His publications assi ...

(via the

South Australian Museum The South Australian Museum is a natural history museum and research institution in Adelaide, South Australia, founded in 1856 and owned by the Government of South Australia. It occupies a complex of buildings on North Terrace in the cultu ...

), the moss herbarium of Professor

David Guthrie Catcheside David Guthrie Catcheside FRS (31 May 1907 – 1 June 1994) was a British plant geneticist. He was educated at Strand School and King's College London (BSc). He was a Lecturer in Botany at King's College London from 1933 to 1936, and at the Unive ...

(1907–1994), and the collections of the

Field Naturalists Society of South Australia The Field Naturalists Society of South Australia Incorporated was founded in 1883 as a section of the Royal Society, and whose aims were to further the cause of the natural sciences in the colony. It was incorporated in 1959 and is still active. Me ...

.State Herbarium history
Department of Environment & Natural Resources. Accessed 27 December 2011. Since 2000 the Herbarium has been located in the historic Tram Barn A building adjacent to the Adelaide Botanic Garden's

Bicentennial Conservatory The Adelaide Botanic Garden is a public garden at the north-east corner of the Adelaide city centre, in the Adelaide Park Lands. It encompasses a fenced garden on North Terrace (between Lot Fourteen, the site of the old Royal Adelaide Hospita ...

on Hackney Road, Adelaide. In late 2011 the Herbarium was due to list its one millionth specimen, possibly a new species. Also in 2011, the Herbarium produced an online version of the ''Flora of South Australia'', 5th edition.

References

External links

eFloraSA Electronic flora of South Australia
Retrieved 18 May 2018. {{Authority control Botany in South Australia Herbaria in Australia Buildings and structures in Adelaide