The National Herbarium of Ireland digital collection of Irish plants

Posted by gnabgib 1/27/2026

The National Herbarium of Ireland digital collection of Irish plants(dri.ie)

116 points | 14 comments

jyoung789 7 days ago|

For those interested, you can search through the collections of herbariums all over north America through portals such as the Consortium of Midwest Herbaria[0], in Europe through digHerb [1], and throughout the rest of the world through many other symbiota portals [2].

You can find your nearest brick and mortar herbarium globally through Index Herbariorum[3]. Though these resources are incomplete, they are pretty extensive regardless.

[0]https://midwestherbaria.org/portal/collections/search/index....

[1]https://digiherb.symbiota.org/

[2] https://symbiota.org/symbiota-portals/

[3]https://sweetgum.nybg.org/science/ih/

Loughla 7 days ago|

Also for those in the States, contact your local state University extension office. They know of local resources like this that aren't widely advertised/don't have an online presence.

dfajgljsldkjag 7 days ago||

It is very important that we treat the natural world like data that needs a backup. The environment changes so fast that we will lose the history of these plants if we do not save them in a digital format. This collection gives us a way to check the past against the future so we can see what has been lost.

xattt 7 days ago||

Neat to see doi implemented as intended, where identifiers link to items that not articles.

impish9208 6 days ago||

Missed opportunity to name it “The Hibernian Herbarium”.

nephihaha 7 days ago|

Not a very user friendly website IMHO. Surprised it doesn't list the Irish language names of many of these plants (as far as I could see).

riffic 7 days ago|

scientifically the only names that matter are the botanic binomials (ICN or ICNafp)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Code_of_Nomencla...

nephihaha 7 days ago|||

I was specifically interested in the Irish names, because they are related to some research I have been doing for a number of years.

The Latin names are available in numerous other sources.

s_dev 7 days ago||||

Richard Feynman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga_7j72CVlc

The names of birds.

tl;dw: Knowing the name of something gives you no knowledge of that thing even if you can name it in every language but it's super useful to know when communicating with others.

wizzwizz4 7 days ago|||

Scientifically, communication matters. Therefore, other names do also matter.

contingencies 7 days ago||

All other names are generally considered either common or historic. Common names are regarded as too ambiguous for scientific use, they are generally only mentioned in relevance to collections such as "How do the local people in <area x> having <population y> of <latin name z> (who might help identify where it is growing) refer to the organism?". In a small number of cases local names confer ethnobotanical or cultural semantics.

nephihaha 7 days ago||

I am well aware that laypeople don't always distinguish between various similar species of plants and animals, and I probably can't in some cases myself, but I am specifically interested in some of those "common or historic names" along with their "ethnobotanical or cultural semantics", to see how they might compare with words elsewhere.

contingencies 7 days ago||

For old Irish names I would have thought Gallic-Druidic cultural associations might have some sort of currency or influence. Maybe try looking for research with those conceptual frames of reference. Here's an example query to place with your favourite LLM: "make a list of the top 30 plants associated with traditional herbal lore in pre-modern ireland. seek gallic/druidic associations through etymology, lore and written record (if feasible). table format."

nephihaha 6 days ago||

There is some of that with certain names for sure. Also interested in comparisons with Manx and Scottish Gaelic and Broad Scots.