Clifford Herbarium

The herbarium contains over 3,000 specimens collected by George Clifford (1685-1760), a wealthy Anglo-Dutch merchant. The Herbarium includes plants that were newly cultivated in Europe at the time of collection, as well as specimens from collectors around the world. The collection has a significant connection with Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), the 'father of modern botany' and deviser of the binomial system of scientific naming. Linnaeus worked at Clifford's estate near Haarlem between 1735 and 1737. Linnaeus described the plants growing there and wrote the Hortus Cliffortianus, in some ways a precursor of his Species Plantarum (1753). Many of the plants in Clifford's herbarium are type specimens for Linnaean names.