Kathryn Kalmbach Herbarium of Vascular Plants

Before Denver Botanic Gardens was established, the Kathryn Kalmbach Herbarium of Vascular Plants was founded by local plant enthusiasts working to document the wild and cultivated flora of Colorado through scientific specimens. Now 70 years old, KHD holds nearly 70,000 specimens collected across Colorado and the greater Southern Rocky Mountain Region. KHD also includes a small ethnobotany collection which documents how people use plants for medical and spiritual purposes, among others. 

Kathryn Kalmbach Herbarium of Vascular Plant specimens are discoverable online through SEINet, an external database used by herbaria across North America. 

Explore the Kathryn Kalmbach Herbarium of Vascular Plants (KHD):

1. Go to swbiodiversity.org/seinet (called “SEINet”)
2. In the navigation ribbon at the top of the page, hit ‘Specimen Search,’ and then ‘Search Collections’ 
3. Click 'Select/Deselect All' at the top to deselect all the checked boxes
4. Scroll down to Southern Rocky Mountain Herbaria and click the “+” next to it to expand it
5. Check the box to the left of “Kathryn Kalmbach Herbarium” to select it
6. Scroll down a little further and press the Search button on the right side of the page near the bottom
7. This brings you to a new page - the search form. You can search for plant specimens by scientific name, family, common name, by location, or you can search for a particular collector’s specimens.
8. Click 'List Display' to see the specimen data and images of the physical specimens that are housed in the Kathryn Kalmbach Herbarium.

Using specimen locality data, we’ve worked with collaborators to create species checklists for popular natural areas across Colorado.