By Pam Carranza, June 2021

The Dallas County Herbarium was established in 2012 as a Texas Master Naturalist Project. A Herbarium is a collection of dried plants and can provide historical information showing the distribution of plant species in a region. Only plants collected in Dallas County are housed our herbarium at the Texas Discovery Gardens. 

Our educational specimens can be checked out by teachers, researchers, and speakers for use in their studies and  presentations.  We currently have over 1700 specimens in our Permanent and Education collections. 

The Herbarium project has taken the efforts of many volunteers. Dedicated Texas Master Naturalist volunteers have collected, pressed, dried, identified and mounted these plants. The information gathered from the collection is then entered into a database that is available and easily accessible on the NTMN website. Due to the Covid-19 virus our work during the past year has been minimal, but we will resume activities as soon as it is safe to do so. Please note, prior experience is not necessary to volunteer for this project. Volunteers are trained on each aspect of the process.  

If you wish to be on the Herbarium email list of volunteers to be notified about Herbarium activities, please send your contact information to Pam Carranza at herbarium@ntmn.org.  Learn more about the project here.