This past spring, Joyce Onyenedum, NYU Assistant Professor, brought her undergraduate class to Madison Square Park to explore the fundamentals of botany in a real-world setting. The park’s “No Mow” Lawn became the students’ classroom: they collected specimens which they then mounted and submitted for consideration to the New York Botanical Garden’s world-class herbarium. Fourteen pressings were chosen for NYBG’s collection, joining 7.8 million other accessions at the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium, the largest in the Western Hemisphere.

Herbaria are beautiful collections of preserved plant material that are a vital tool in the study of plant taxonomy and systematics—the study of finding, identifying, describing, classifying, and naming plants—as well as for understanding the geographic distribution of plants. These specimens are the best record of a plant’s original distribution, providing a history of where plants have moved by human or natural means. Scientists can use this data to understand changes in plant locations due to habitat loss, climate change and other human impacts. Before mass printing and digitalization, herbaria were essential for plant identification and tracking.

Onyenedum’s outreach mission is to raise awareness and appreciation of plants, particularly in urban settings.The Madison Square Park horticulture team was excited to work alongside NYU students, sharing their expertise as well as park specimens to keep this important botanical tradition alive and thriving.

To view the specimens collected in Madison Square Park, click on the link below.

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