Plant images online

This page contains links to a few of the many botanical illustration collections and plant photographs on the Internet today. Many websites on this page have links to other related websites. No endorsement of products or information at these sites is implied. Please read disclaimer for more information. Web links checked 28 November 2011 using W3C Link Checker.

Botanical illustration | Pictures of plants

Botanical illustration

Botanical illustration with scientific accuracy portrays a plant with the precision and level of detail for it to be recognized and distinguished from another species.

Also see: The Art of Botanical Illustration. Selected Bibliography (University of Delaware)

The Art of botanical illustration online exhibition (Special Collections University of Delaware Library)
Aimed to highlight the development of botanical illustration from early printed books to the present day, this exhibition is arranged under the headings: 'Herbals', 'Travels and Exploration', 'Scientific Botany', 'Women Artists', 'Seed Catalogs', and 'Modern Botanicals'.

Art Plantae Today
ArttPlantae is a resource provider to assist artists with their understanding of botany. It is also valuable to anyone interested in drawing plants (e.g., gardeners, nature guides, illustrators, biology students, informal science educators, and K-12 science teachers).

Amazing rare things. The art of natural history in the age of discovery (The Royal Collection, Great Britain)
The Royal Collection, in collaboration with Sir David Attenborough, have selected a number of natural history drawings and watercolours for an exhibition which features pictures of fauna and flora discovered on voyages of discovery, dating from the late 15th century to the early 18th century. "Through painstaking examination and description, Leonardo da Vinci, the collector Cassiano dal Pozzo, Wenceslaus Hollar, Alexander Marshal, Maria Sibylla Merian and Mark Catesby hoped to comprehend the natural riches of an ever-expanding world."

Botanical Illustration Resources (Western Washington University)
A guide to selected hardcopy and Internet resources relating to botanical art with listings of periodicals, biographies/diaries and plant monographs with botanical illustration. Each reference is accompanied by a brief description with bibliographic details. Compiled by Julene Sodt of the Western Libraries, Western Washington University for the 1999 Northwest Botanical Illustration Symposium this bibliography continues to be updated frequently.

Botanicus digital library (Missouri Botanical Garden)
A freely accessible web-based encyclopaedia of historic botanical literature, including historic botanical images, called Botanicus. Currently (November 2011) there are 804 titles (books or journals) comprising 3,655 volumes available online. All images on Botanicus are free for non-commercial use. You can access the collection by author, title or subject or browse by map location or date of publication. There is also a section highlighting recent additions to this resource. Botanicus is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, W.M. Keck Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

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Botany Libraries On-Line Exhibits (Harvard University Herbaria)
"These online exhibits draw their inspiration and content primarily from library and archival materials residing in the Harvard University Botany Libraries, including, for example: book illustrations, manuscripts, photographs, correspondence, diaries, field notes, specimens, and unpublished drawings and watercolors."

Catalog of Botanical Illustrations (Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History)
The Department of Botany of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History has created a database of the more than 3000 botanical illustrations. Currently the Smithsonian is offering a digital presentation of 500 images in the three families that have been completed: Bromeliaceae, Cactaceae, and Melastomataceae. Biographical sketches of the artists are included.

Collectie Botanie. de Moninckx atlas (Bibliotheek van de Universiteit van Amsterdam)
The Altas contains 457 watercolours, painted between 1686 and 1709, of plants found in the Amsterdam Botanical Garden. You can browse the images page by page or via a list of plant families. [Dutch].

Collection of roses from nature (New York Public Library)
Originally published in 1799 this online digital copy of 'A Collection of roses from nature' painted by Mary Lawrance (d.1830) contains twelve images on each Web page with bibliographical information available by clicking on individual images. Mary Lawrance dedicated this volume to Queen Charlotte.

Curtis Botanical Magazine : [volumes 1-26] (US National Agricultural Library Rare Book Collection)
"This digital presentation represents one thousand fifty records, one thousand forty-eight plates, (two of the original plates are missing, plates 797 and 860), and there are one thousand four hundred and fifty-six related title pages of text from the first 26 volumes. A collection of the first 164 volumes is housed at the National Agricultural Library in Beltsville, Maryland." Curtis Botanical Magazine was published between 1787 and 1807.

Digital orchid library (Michigan State University)
Botanical illustrations feature throughout this selection of digitised books and periodicals relating to orchids. Page-by-page images of each title is available and the works can be browsed by category (classifications and botanical data; geographic studies of orchids; narratives on orchid growing; or periodicals) or searched using keywords or names. Images are displayed in the JPEG format (.jpg). This digital collection is a collaboration between Michigan State University, the American Orchid Society, the Missouri Botanical Garden, and the National Agricultural Library.

The Endeavour Botanical Illustrations (The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London)
"The Botany Library of the Department of Information and Library Systems holds all of the surviving botanical artwork from Captain James Cook's first Pacific voyage. Digitised pages of the botanical drawings and engravings can be browsed or searched using a range of options, including genus, species and country.

Flora Danica Online (The Royal Library, Copenhagen)
"The vast Danish botanical work Flora Danica, begun in 1761, consists of 3,240 engravings in folio of all the wild plants that grew in the kingdom of Denmark." You can search by plant name or plate number as well as browse the images issue by issue. [Danish, English].

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Flower hunter : Ellis Rowan (National Library of Australia in Canberra)
This detailed biography on the life and works of botanical artist Marian Ellis Rowan (1849-1922) - generally known as Ellis Rowan - complements an exhibition first held at the National Library of Australia in Canberra. Each section of the biography is devoted to different periods of the artist's life with photos and digitised images of Rowan's paintings interspersed within the text. Clicking on an image brings up a larger version.

Fuchs botanical : 1545 (Yale Medical Library)
Digital version of Leonhard Fuch's Botany, a work on herbal medicine published in 1545 [Latin title: Primi de stirpium historia commentariorum tomi vivae imagines, in exiguam angustioremque formam contractae...] has been scanned from a copy held in the Harvey Cushing / John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University. The volume consists 516 woodcuts of plants, some colored, a dedicatory letter, and an alphabetical index listing plant names. Each very high quality image represents two pages of the book, so files are large and may have longer than average download times over a modem connection.

Hortus Nitidissimis (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew)
Published as a series of periodicals between 1750 and 1786 this publication, designed to offer the reader a collection of botanical prints, notes on the plants and guidance on cultivation is one of the great flower books of the eighteenth century. Rarely found in a complete form this collection of digital images of texts and drawings enable the complete work to be brought together digitally. The images can be enlarged. Browse three different online copies of the work - the copy housed at Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, the copy located at the Natural History Museum in London and an idealised copy based on three existing copies. There is a simple search function, a picture gallery of prints, transcriptions of the Latin text into English and information about the work and the digitisation project.

Illustrated Garden (Rare Books from the Missouri Botanical Garden)
This archived Web-based encyclopedia is presented by the Missouri Botanical Garden Library and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Focusing primarily on beautifully illustrated volumes from the library's rare book collection, 131 volumes totaling 51,636 pages and 12,670 botanical illustrations make up this collection. Browse the collection by title, author or illustration. The search engine searches for the common name or scientific name of each plant represented in an illustration. This entire collection can also be found at the Missouri Botanical Garden Library Botanicus.org site where new volumes are regularly added.

Irises
David Pane-Joyce has compiled this website providing a description of the Iris genus and related genera; a bibliography; and a listing of national and international iris societies. Recent additions to the site are reproductions of the colour plates from W. R. Dykes' monograph 'The Genus Iris'.

Perennial Pages: An Exhibition of Flower Illustration in Books Since the Renaissance
Online version of an exhibition of flower illustration in books held at Glasgow University Library 13 May - 26 August 1995. "The exhibition aims to display a representative sample, ranging from the illustrated manuscripts of the late middle ages, through woodcut, engraving and lithograph until 20th century photographic techniques took over. Most of the volumes displayed have been selected from the personal collections of William Hunter (1718-1783) and George Arnott Walker-Arnott (1799-1868). However several are from strong holdings acquired by the Library to support the teaching of botany which has flourished in the University since 1704." Not all text has online illustrations. There is also notes on the artists and a select bibliography.

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Plantarum rariorum horti caesari schoenbrunnensis descriptiones et icones / Jacquin, Nikolaus Joseph (Missouri Botanical Garden Library)
Plantarum rariorum horti caesari schoenbrunnensis descriptiones et icones by Nikolaus Joseph Jacquin was published in four volumes from 1797 to 1804. It describes plants cultivated in the royal garden at the palace of Schonbrunn near Vienna. You can browse the work page by page or select a particular illustration from a list of images. The author offers a description in English to accompany each of the illustrations.

Powerful grace lies in herbs and plants
A digital retrospective of a joint exhibition on herbal medicine from various materials published from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries with each image accompanied by background information on the publication it appeared in and the author/artist responsible for the work.

Romance of orchid discovery : the John Day scrapbooks (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew)
This virtual exhibition displays 73 images of orchids organised under 'Tropical America', 'Tropical Asia', 'Europe and Afro-Madagascar' and 'John Day's orchids' all taken from the John Day scrapbooks. John Day (1824-1888) a prominent orchid grower and enthusiast of his day created a series of over fifty scrapbooks containing nearly 3,000 detailed drawings and watercolours.

Temple of flora : or garden of the botanist, poet, painter and philosopher (University of Wisconsin Libraries Digital Content Group)
This site offers access to a digitised version of the 1812 publication 'Temple of Flora, or, Garden of the botanist, poet, painter, and philosopher' by Robert John Thornton (1765-1832), the English physician. Individual pages are browsable via a display gallery view and plates may be selected from a table of contents; a full-text search facility is also available.

What is an herb? (Health Sciences Library at the University of Virginia)
Online version of an exhibition relating to medicinal herbs, displayed in the Health Sciences Library at the University of Virginia in 1997. It highlights four herbals: The Vienna Dioscorides (De Materia Medica, 512 A.D.); The Badianus Manuscript (an Aztec Herbal of 1552); John Gerard's Herball, or Generall Historie of Plants (1597) and Nicholas Culpeper's English Physician (1652.).

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Pictures of plants

Also see: Information about plants and Plant conservation and protection organisations and Plant societies and organisations

Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum Digital Library
The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum's Digital Library includes a catalogue of images and scientific nomenclature of plants, animals, minerals and biotic communities of the Sonoran Desert region.

Bioimages: plant features
Topics include sexual systems, pollination syndromes, gymnosperm cones, fruit development, fruit and seed dispersal, non-seed plant life cycles and biology of some invasive plants (particularly of Tennessee).

Botanical image database = Botanische bilddatenbank (University of Basel, Switzerland)
Access to over 4,000 images from the University of Basel's plant image collection searchable by geographic location (Basle, Samos and Tenerife), insect pollinators, biome type and morphology. Technical information on how the collection was compiled is only available in German. [German, English].

Botanischer Garten Bochum - Gesamtabbildungsverzeichnis = Botanical Garden Bochum - picture gallery
Browse 5300 pictures by systematik or plant families. [German].

Californian native plants : photo gallery and glossary (Theodore Payne Foundation for Wildflowers and Native Plants, Inc.)
Photo gallery of many native plants and wildflowers of California can be browsed by common or scientific names or by rare, threatened and extinct plants.

CalPhotos: Plants (UC Berkeley)
The Berkeley Digital Library Project has over 100,00 searchable and browsable images of mostly California plants compiled by individuals and organizations. Each contributor has designated his/her own copyright restrictions for his/her photos.

Carnivorous Plant Database
This database contains over 3000 entries and includes synonyms, cultivars, common, old and currently accepted names. Some entries are linked to well defined images or other information and a search facility helps locate items. Images can be accessed separately through a page that only lists those entries with photographs attached. The site also provides advice on the cultivation of plants or plant tissue, a discussion group, a section for trading and advertising, and many links to relevant external sites.

CATENA, the Digital Archive of Historic Gardens and Landscapes (Bard Graduate Center)
"A catena is a water chain, a feature frequently found in villa gardens. These water chains connect nature, architecture, and sculpture, drawing visitors from one part of a garden to another..." The initial component of CATENA is built around the villa, an important landscape type in garden history. Its purpose is to serve as an educational tool for teachers and scholars of landscape history affiliated with schools and universities. This site makes extensive use of pop up windows.

CSU Stanislaus. Botanical image database
This site offers a selection of 825 images including microscope images from the collection used for courses at California State University (CSU) Stanislaus. You can browse through the images by phylum or search by a variety of options including family, common name, structure or magnification, as well as by course. The site also links to information on how the microscope photographs were taken and a database of floral images. This resource has been compiled by staff from the Biology Department at CSU Stanislaus.

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Den virtuella floran = Virtual flora of Sweden (Arne Anderberg and Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet)
A project by the section of Phanerogam botany at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm, Den virtuella floran is a virtual exhibition of Swedish flora with photographs, distribution maps, and descriptions. You can search the database by scientific name or browse the species, families and genera indexes. [Swedish].

A Digital Flora of Newfoundland and Labrador Vascular Plants
Over 1300 vascular plant species from the Annotated Checklist of the Vascular Plants of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Forestry images: forest health, natural resources, fire, trees, wildlife, silviculture photos (University of Georgia and the USDA Forest Service)
Pictures of insects, diseases, trees, plants, weeds, ecosystems, fire, ecology, other pests and wildlife.

Flower guide of Tibet (Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History)
This site presents over 400 Tibetan flora images the expedition team took during their three main expeditions in 2006, 2007 and 2009.

Flowerbase (Provided by Glasshouse Business Networks Infosystem of the Netherlands)
This searchable database includes hundreds of images of flowering plants, mainly ornamental or garden plants. Search by botanical name or common name in English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish or Danish. Use the "Preview pictures" option to reduce loading time and preview thumbnail images.

HortiPlex plant database (Hosted by GardenWeb)
HortiPlex provides access to thousands of images of plants together with information on each plant, supported by links to information in other databases including the USDA Plants Database. Users can add their own images and information about a particular plant and track who has uploaded images and/or comments through 'Member's Journals'.

Image Collections of the Australian National Botanic Gardens and Australian National Herbarium
Guide to the photograph and illustration collections of the Australian National Botanic Gardens. The bulk of the collection consists of identified Australian plant species, but there is also a large number of environmental and conservation images.

Images and descriptions of flowering plant families (University of Hawaii)
An extensive collection of photographs of flowers and flower parts of many families.

ImageBank (Centre for Bioscience)
Over 7,600 downloadable images from a wide range of bioscience subject areas. Search by keyword or browse collection by systematic classification, common/scientific names, subject, collections or contributor. Images contributed by academics, researchers, Learned Societies, industry and individuals with rights cleared for educational purposes.

Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center : image gallery (University of Texas at Austin)
Hundreds of photos of plants and wildflowers found throughout the United States searchable by scientific or common names, photographer, areas, plant parts or native status. Each record contains a photo, brief information on geography and status and a link to the plant's record in the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS).

Latin American plant gallery (Missouri Botanical Garden)
This site provides a browsable collection of approximately 40 images of Latin American plants along with brief descriptions including information about location family and Latin name.

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Michigan Wildflowers
Digital photographs to help identify wildflowers found in Michigan USA including common and Latin names.

MykoWeb : Mushrooms, Fungi, Mycology
Vast array of sites devoted to the pursuit of mushrooms, and mycology (the study of the fungi). Also see photographs at David Ellis's Mycology Online. Also see article about mycology at Online Mycology Tips and Resources with links to more resources.

Native plant database (University of Texas at Austin)
Online database for the native plants of North America. Search for over 7,000 native plants by scientific or common name or by a particular family of plants. There is also a combination search facility to search by state or province, habit, lifespan, light requirement, soil moisture, and time of bloom and colour.

Noble Foundation Plant image gallery
Ongoing project which currently includes over 600 species of vascular plants, native to the Oklahoma-Texas region of the United States, mainly concentrating on those found in the proximity of Ardmore, where the Noble Foundation is located. The images are divided into three sections: grasses and grasslike plants, forbs and trees, and shrubs and woody vines. You can browse each section by common name, scientific name or via family or tribe index, or search by a new image gallery search engine.

Orchids of Europe and the Mediterranean
A guide to a selection of wild orchids found in Europe and the Mediterranean Basin with each record containing photos, brief species descriptions and brief distribution details on where the species is likely to be found.

Plant image collection (Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History)
Over 31,000 photographic images of plants species and habitats searchable by family, Latin or common plant name, or photographer.

Plant image gallery (Dr. Thomas Schoepke of the Institute of Pharmacy at Greifswald University in Germany)
Over 5,000 photographs of plants mainly from Europe, Costa Rica, the Galapagos Islands and Moenchgut/Ruegen Island in Germany can be accessed from a list of family names or via each of four different geographic series. The lists include scientific name, whether the plant is cultivated or native, and location. [English].

Plants in motion
Watch plants do amazing things in this collection of forty time-lapse movies of of plant growth and development from germination to flowering, including tropic responses, nastic movement and circadian rhythms. All of the movies are in QuickTime format.

Plants of the North
Boundary Water region around Ontario and Minnesota

PLANTS Photo Gallery USDA (United States Department of Agriculture)
The PLANTS Gallery emphasizes photos and line drawings of U.S. plants but also contains many cultivated or foreign taxa, and forms part of the PLANTS Database which includes further information about the plants.

Roses Loubert - Collection Nationale de Roses Botaniques (France)
"The Loubert Rose garden is the fruit of over twenty years of dedication for the rose. It has developed over the years to include over 2,500 different roses. It was recognised as a National Collection of rosa in 2002. Its main purpose is to preserve and display species as well as old and rare roses." This site includes an amazing collection of pictures of some of the roses found in the garden.

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Simolan Rosario (Pirjo Rautio)
This website features an extensive photographic collection of Old Roses including Rosa gallica cultivars.

Southeastern U.S. Plants
Browse this collection of images of Southeast United States plants by flowering date, common name, scientific name, family and thumbnail image.

TROPICOS image index (Missouri Botanical Garden)
This website, compiled by the Missouri Botanical Garden and supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, contains over 21,000 digitised images (photographs and drawings) of plants, which are linked to their associated data in the TROPICOS nomenclature database. The images are browsable by plant family.

Vascular Plant Families photographic site (University of Hawaii Botany Department)
Over 225 families represented.

Weed Science Society of America photo gallery
This site contains photographs of over 200 specimens of common plants found in North America. Some are weeds while others not generally considered weeds may have toxic or poisonous properties, or be of general interest as wildflowers or herbs. Access to the images is from a long list, organised alphabetically by common name. It also includes scientific names, and additional information in some cases. A new window will be displayed with the photograph. The site also includes a brief introduction and glossary of terms.

Yamasaki Lab plant photo gallery
Asian plant database with over 1200 images.

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Classification: Plants; Botany, Plants and history; Plants in art; Botanical illustration; Flowers - Pictorial works; Botany - Images; Photographs of flowers; Photographs of plants; Plant varieties - Images; Digital plant images

Document updated 2011 November 28

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