About the Archive

Herbarium Vivum is a plant specimen archive built in the spirit of the great herbaria — a slow, deliberate record of leaves gathered, pressed, and named. Each entry is filed under its true binomial, with family, locale, and collector duly noted, the way a curator keeps a herbarium cabinet.

The Linnaean Manner

Following the method of Carl Linnaeus, every specimen receives a two-part Latin name — genus and epithet — placing it within a kingdom of order and relation. The binomial is not decoration; it is the address by which a leaf is found again, in this cabinet or any other.

The Cabinets

The archive is arranged by family, each cabinet holding drawers of pressed sheets. A specimen may be a Holotype — the single sheet upon which a name was first fixed — or an Isotype, a Paratype, a Syntype, each a thread in the web of naming. Catalogue numbers follow the form HV-1000, the plate number its engraving in the record.

The Method

Each sheet carries a label: the binomial in italic, the family in capitals, the locale abbreviated as a botanist would in the field, the collector's initials, the date of gathering. The completeness score marks how much of the plant is preserved — root, stem, leaf, flower, fruit. A score of ninety and above is a fine sheet indeed.

Visit the Cabinets

The cabinets stand open. Wander the index, consult the glossary, or join the specimen exchange to receive a dried sheet and its botanical note each month. The curator files new specimens regularly — the archive grows the way a garden grows, by patient tending.