National Agricultural Library Botany Collections

Special Collections of the National Agricultural Library (NAL) acquires, arranges, describes, preserves and makes available rare materials significant to the history of agriculture. Materials are obtained through donation or active collection in accordance with the established Special Collections collection development policy. Special Collections staff organize and describe materials according to archival principles and create descriptions and indexes to enhance access. Staff do not edit or otherwise modify the original materials. The views expressed in the collections do not necessarily reflect the policies of the National Agricultural Library or the United States Department of Agriculture.

Botany occupies 3,570 linear feet or 0.68 miles in Special Collections (Rare books and manuscript collections). Of 360 manuscript collections, many contain botany related materials. Several examples of unique collections include:

• Charles C. Plitt Collection, 1897-1994, local Maryland botany;
• Harry A. Borthwick Papers, 1901-1967, plant physiology research for USDA;
• USDA Fiber Collection, 1902-1982, documents relating to more than 300 genera of plants used for fiber;
• USDA Small Fruit Improvement Program Records, 1914-1978, including Donald H. Scott's field notebooks and George M. Darrow's photographs; and
• Typed manuscript of Edwin Mead Wilcox's Diseases of Vegetable Crops and Ornamentals in the United States, published in 1928.

There are also many herbals in NAL's collection such as:

• Bock, Hieronymus. Hieronymi Tragi, De stirpium, maxime earum. Strassburg, 1552.
• Brunfels, Otto. Herbarum vivae eicones. Strassburg, 1530.
• Dodoens, Rembert. Cruydeboeck. Antwerp, 1563.
• Dodoens, Rembert. Purgantium. Antwerp, 1574.
• Fuchs, Leonhart. De historia stirpium. Basel, 1542.
• Gerard, John. The herbal. London, 1597.

Some of the rare illustrations and works of art include:

• Bolton, James. Original manuscript Icones Fungorum Circa Halifax Sponte Nascentium, 1784-1792. Notes and drawings.
• Coxe, William. Original manuscript. 1810-1831. Descriptive text and sketches of fruits.
• USDA Bureau of Plant Industry Horticultural and Pomological Investigations Records. 1892- 1960. Illustrations, research records, and reports of USDA research on specific crops.
• J. Horace McFarland Papers. 1923-1975. Negatives and images of plants, parks, and gardens.
• Wilhelm Heinrich Prestele Papers. 1889-1890s. Original watercolors, sketches, notes, and specimen leaves of grapes.
• USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection. 1888-1939. 7,000 watercolor paintings of fruit created by USDA artists.

The Plant Sciences Card Catalog was produced between 1903 and 1952. (Barnett, Claribel R. 1937, p.100) Journals, principally those published before 1800, are comprehensively indexed in the catalog in addition to incidental indexing on select topics of special interest. Subjects covered in addition to botany include horticulture, tropical agriculture, fibers, gums, resins, pharmacology, special crops, bibliographies, and biographies. (Atwood, p. 4) According to David G. Frodin who wrote Guide to Standard Floras of the World, Second edition. 2001, this catalog is considered to be the most complete guide to botanical literature of the first half of the twentieth century.