Armchair Botanist

The Armchair Botanist program is a collaboration among botanists, museum professionals, students, biodiversity informaticians, and you!

The scientific specimens curated by the BRIT Philecology Herbarium are carefully stored in museum cabinets in a climate-controlled facility, making them difficult to access. It is the goal of this program to make all our specimens available online (images and data) to further research and education. A digitized specimen is a tool that allows access to scientific vouchers and observations that span hundreds of years – an essential component to biological research, as well as any research that deals with past environmental change and future models.

Access Digitized Specimens

This program includes activities such as presentations, transcription blitzes, and online community science activities to help liberate the scientific specimens that are held in public trust by FWBG | BRIT.

In 2024, we plan to have Armchair Botanist meetings over Zoom every month at 12:00 PM (with some exceptions). Please check here for those links and for other events we host. If you’d like us to email you with information about our events and links to recorded meetings, sign up here.

Scheduled Zoom Forums

There are currently no scheduled forums at this moment. Check out our YouTube channel for our past forum recordings.

Botany Research Forum Recordings

Current Projects

You can get involved! We currently have four different projects for our Armchair Botanist across our collections:

BRIT/SMU/NLU/VDB: Mapping (georeferencing) our specimens from Texas & Oklahoma. Instructions for getting started can be found on this website: www.torcherbaria.org/georef/ Email herbarium@brit.org if you have any questions!
BRIT/SMU: Skeletal transcription of our specimens from Africa through Crowdsourcing platform.
VDB: Skeletal transcription of specimens from around the world through Crowdsourcing platform.
NLU: Skeletal transcription of specimens from the USA & around the world through Crowdsourcing platform.

The BRIT Library has a new volunteer project with Dr. Sherwin Carlquist’s collections that may be of interest to our Armchair Botanists. Email BRIT Librarian, Ana Niño, if you’d like to get involved!

Crowdsourcing Resources

Welcome to our crowdsourcing initiative! Here, you can become an armchair botanist by helping our herbarium organize critical plant data—without ever leaving home. By transcribing and reviewing information from digital specimens gathered across the globe, you’ll play an active role in advancing botanical research and preserving biodiversity.

Crowdsourcing Instructions BRIT/SMU: Flora of Africa

Crowdsourcing Instructions VDB: World

Crowdsourcing Instructions NLU: USA & World

Crowdsourcing Volunteer Resources