Founded in 1959, the Portland State University Herbarium (HPSU) currently contains about 29,000 specimens of vascular plants, mosses, and lichens, and is the second-largest herbarium in Oregon. It consists of a core of 3,600 historical specimens collected between 1862 and 1920, with the remainder collected since 1959 by PSU faculty, students, agency botanists, consultants, and private individuals. As a repository for voucher specimens, it enables users to identify and document occurrences of both native and exotic species, an essential component of native plant conservation and invasive species mitigation. The Herbarium is a regional resource focused on the changing flora of the rapidly urbanizing Portland-Vancouver metro area, the Columbia River Gorge, and the lower Columbia River region. Specimen data from the PSU Herbarium is available on the websites of the Consortium of Pacific Northwest Herbaria, the Oregon Flora Project, and iDigBio.
The PSU Herbarium is open by appointment only, and is located in the SRTC Building, Room B1-34. See Contact page for more information.