The University of Manitoba is located on original lands of Anishinaabeg, Ininewuk, Anisininewuk, Dakota Oyate, and Denesuline, and on the homeland of the Red River Métis Nation.
WIN Herbarium’s plant collections originated in the territories of Métis and First Nations people and in Inuit Nunangat.
WIN Herbarium is committed to acknowledging the enduring colonial legacy of botanical collections, and seeks to challenge and address its colonial presence, as guided by the needs and wishes of the Indigenous peoples of this land.
We welcome knowledge, questions, and visits from Indigenous peoples interested in working with, using, contributing to, or rematriating from the herbarium. We are committed to building collaborative and respectful communities through open communication. You can contact us by writing to [email protected]
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A herbarium is a collection of dried plants for scientific study. Like a museum, it is curated and is accessible to researchers and interested members of the public. A herbarium is a historical record of a region's flora, cataloguing the anatomy, molecular information, and distribution of each plant species. It documents botanical discovery over hundreds of years and records changes in plant diversity over time, facilitating long-term studies of the natural environment.
Founded in 1907, the Vascular Plant Herbarium of the Department of Biological Sciences, University of Manitoba (WIN) houses the most extensive and broadly representative collection of vascular plants of Manitoba, 85,000 specimens including a reference seed collection. For over 100 years, WIN has served as an important resource for taxonomic research and for studies documenting the distribution and ecology of Manitoba’s vascular plant species.
A Virtual Herbarium with over 26,000 specimen records, most of which are georeferenced and linked to high-resolution images, are now accessible through Canadensys and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).
Click below for tips on navigating these sites:
| tips_for_navigating_gbif_and_canadensys.pdf |
