University of Melbourne Herbarium

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Parkville, VIC
University of Melbourne Herbarium

We are a teaching & research collection with c.150,000 specimens including fungi, mosses, liverworts

We are a teaching & research collection with c.150,000 specimens including fungi, mosses, liverworts, lichens, algae, ferns, gymnosperms & flowering plants.

28/05/2026

To mark National Reconciliation Week, students, graduate researchers and staff of the School of BioSciences are invited to join the Hidden Waters of The Birrarung event on Monday 1st of June @ 10 am-12 pm.

Herbarium staff are excited to join in the guided tour by University of Melbourne Plant Science student and cultural storyteller Jakobi Ili-Jakobi (Djab Wurrung and Dhauwurd Wurrung), who is also one of our fantastic Herbarium volunteers, along with Petrichor Collaborative, looking at the Birrarung river's presence on campus and drawing your attention to old river red gums, eels moving through stormwater systems and native species persisting in urban landscapes. The guided walk is followed by an art activity, led by creative practitioner Maria Bulmaga.

Meet at the Melbourne University Welcome Ground, east of the Engineering Workshops (Building 169) and south of the Eastern Resource Centre Library (Building 171).

27/05/2026

This week School of Biosciences welcomed Moira O'Bryan, Dean of the Faculty of Science, and colleagues to the Herbarium, to discuss the research and teaching work that is underway in the collection. It was wonderful opportunity to highlight the work of our student volunteers. Angharad, our Digitisation Officer, gave a great demonstration of our digitisation pipeline, highlighting just what it takes to create high-quality digital specimen records.

08/05/2026

Congratulations to our School of BioSciences Honours students who completed their final talks today! There were some fascinating talks including by Plant Systematics Lab students Lexie Sharples, Rory Day, and Georg Armstrong! It is amazing how much research they each fitted into the last year. Well done and good luck with thesis writing!

26/03/2026

MELU recently received the generous gift of a set of algal specimens collected by Dr Louise Phillips, gifted to our collection by Dr David Phillips. The specimens were collected by Louise during her PhD study on the Rhodomelaceae, supervised by Dr Gerry Kraft in the early 2000s. The collection includes specimens from her dissertation, as well as others from New Zealand collected during research with Prof. Wendy Nelson, and from the Falkland Islands for research with Emeritus Prof Margaret Clayton of Monash University. Many thanks to David for this kind gift, which will be a wonderful addition to our algal collection.

21/02/2026

Flora of Victoria is a wrap for 2026. Great to share the diversity and beauty of the native Victorian plants with ~100 keen undergraduate and graduate students. A huge shout out to Mike Bayly and Annie Tabone for all the work done. A massive effort by all to make it happen!

02/02/2026

We've had a great week at Mt Hotham with the 3rd year "Field Botany" class. There was lots of botany, in stunning landscapes, with a fabulous bunch of students!

07/10/2025

Congratulations to recent graduate Candice Farrugia-Roberts who received the Best presentation (Student/Early-Mid Career Researcher or Practitioner) award at the 2025 Australasian Seed Science Conference in Horsham recently.
Candice presented a component of her Honours research in a talk entitled "Comparing Ex-situ Seed Longevity for 24 Victorian Temperate Grassland Species." Well done Candice!

11/09/2025

This week the Plant Systematic Research Group took the chance to update our research group photo before enjoying one of our regular lab morning tea catch ups. The native plants in the campus gardens provided a fantastic and appropriate backdrop for the photo!

28/08/2025

The University of Melbourne Herbarium, Melbourne Data Analytics Platform, and Museums Victoria are thrilled to announce McCoy Project seed funding for a collaboration to apply AI technologies to accelerate the registration of the Museum’s collections.

This research will create an AI digitisation pipeline for museum collections, using the Museum’s Graptolite collection of ~12,500 specimens as a pilot. The pipeline extends the ‘Hespi’ AI pipeline, which University of Melbourne researchers created to extract data from herbarium specimen images.

Dr Nurin Veis, Director of the Museums Victoria Research Institute, says “This university-industry collaboration contributes to the massive task of digitising and distributing biodiversity data in our science collections.”

Read more about our partnership @ https://www.unimelb.edu.au/newsroom/news/2025/august/museums-victoria-partnership-harnesses-ai-powered-biodiversity-research

18/07/2025

We've had a bryophyte filled year at MELU thanks to support from an ALA Data Mobilisation Grant, to digitise our bryophyte and liverwort collections.

Margaret Brookes, Curation Officer, has worked tirelessly to accession and digitise approximately 5700 specimens (representing 1010 species) over the course of the project!

Dr David Meagher's personal herbarium, which was kindly gifted by Janine Major in David's honour, is now safely accessioned at MELU. Specimens collected during David's PhD study, supervised by Mike Bayly, documenting the bryophyte flora of Lord Howe Island are now available in the collection and online.

In a fitting compliment to this curation work, we had the pleasure of hosting the family of another renowned bryologist, Dr G.A.M. Scott, in the Herbarium during a bryophyte focused tour for Queen’s College Sugden Society members.

Address

Level 1, Natural Philosophy Building, School Of BioSciences
Parkville, VIC
3010

Telephone

+61 3 8344 5040

Website

http://biosciences.unimelb.edu.au/engage/the-university-of-melbourne-herbarium

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