Since its inception even as a Botanical Garden under the auspices of Malabar Botanical Garden Society during 1990’s, the garden had been a repository which includes lower group forms. During 2018, the herbaria of Malabar Botanical Garden and Institute for Plant Sciences was recognised as the international herbarium for algae, fungi, lichen, bryophytes, pteridophytes, angiosperms, under the acronym MBGH.

The MBGH herbarium today contains approximately 11,000 plant specimens, making it one of the best herbaria in the state. The MBGH herbarium is open for public use by appointment, from 10 am to 5 pm, Monday through Saturday. Please contact us beforehand to make sure someone will be available to orient you and assist you if necessary. MBGH is closed on all Sundays and most national holidays.

The MBGH herbarium is in the process of imaging key specimens at high resolution, and converting textual and graphical elements on a sheet into a digital format that can more easily lend itself to data analysis and synthesis. The plant specimen affixed to a herbarium sheet seen today will never contain more information, from this point onwards it will only degrade (even with the most careful attention to preservation). It is our goal to image all the specimens in the MBGH herbarium, and make these images accessible by the larger botanical community. The process is on the go.