Cape Cod Flora

Pam Polloni (red sweater), curator of the MBL/WHOI Library Herbarium, shows visitors examples of holdings in the WHOI botanical collection, which dates back to the 1850s and documents the diverse flora of Cape Cod and coastal islands with more than 9,000 specimens. The region is well known to botanists as a boundary between the cold-water flora typical of more northerly regions and the flora of warmer waters to the south. In addition to terrestrial species, the Herbarium also contains samples of marine and freshwater algae found along the East Coast. The Library is in the process of cataloging and digitizing the collection to make it available online. (Photo by Ken Kostel, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)