Deaver Herbarium

Learn about the Deaver Herbarium

Our collection

The Deaver Herbarium is a nationally recognized research collection founded in 1930. The herbarium houses ~130,000 specimens from the 1880’s to present. The collections serve as a repository for NAU faculty, staff, and student research vouchers. Although collections are worldwide in scope with 55 countries represented, particularly valuable collections include those from regional tribal and federal lands including 10 national parks estimated to be 50% of the collections.  

NSF funding supported the data capture, imaging, and georeferencing of all processed specimens. This material is available through loan and exchange programs to other institutions and worldwide via the Southwestern Environmental Information Network web portal.  

More than three-quarters of the herbarium’s specimens were collected in Arizona, with most coming from the northern half of the state. In addition to northern Arizona, the collection emphasizes plants from the southern Colorado Plateau and adjacent deserts.

Each specimen documents the existence of an individual plant species at a particular place and time. Collections of specimens allow researchers to identify unknown plants, investigate how plants are related to each other, and how plants respond to environmental and biological changes over time. This information is critical in the study of biological diversity and in understanding how climate change, invasive species, and other challenges will affect biodiversity.

In addition to its collections, The Deaver Herbarium houses a small library and is home to helpful staff.  Research staff members also collect plants in northern Arizona, the Colorado Plateau states, and the mountains of the southwestern U.S., Mexico, and South America. 

Historical notes

Started in 1930, the herbarium is named for its first curator, Chester “Danny” Deaver.

Each permanent scientific repository is assigned a unique identifier, which takes the form of an acronym. The Deaver Herbarium’s permanent acronym, ASC, was assigned when NAU was called Arizona State College.

Map and directions

On the campus of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona, the Deaver Herbarium is housed in the Biological Sciences building (Bldg. #21) at 617 S. Beaver St. This Google map image shows the exact location.

The Deaver Herbarium is on the third floor of the building and can be easily located by entering the building at its southern entrance, which can be found just south of  a covered bus stop on S. Beaver St. If you enter the building through the southern entrance, take the stairwell to the third floor, and the herbarium will be just across the hall in room 314.