Hunt Institute specializes in the history of botany and all aspects of plant science and serves the international scientific community through research and documentation. To this end, the Institute acquires and maintains authoritative collections of books, plant images, manuscripts, portraits and data files, and provides publications and other modes of information service. The Institute meets the reference needs of botanists, biologists, historians, conservationists, librarians, bibliographers and the public at large, especially those concerned with any aspect of the North American flora. Learn more
-
Rachel McMasters Miller Hunt
"My life has been spent among books, and my specialty has been in the great wide field of botanical literature.... The whole world is open to the botanical collector, whether it be history, art, biography, bibliography or travels, everything is there to be studied and enjoyed."
Learn More -
Anne Ophelia Todd Dowden collection
Dowden (1907–2007) extensively researched and then wrote, illustrated and designed 9 books and 5 magazine articles and illustrated 9 books and 9 articles by other authors on plant themes. Hunt Institute is the repository of the most extensive collection of Dowden original watercolors and ink drawings (438), research drawings, publication layouts and correspondence through a gift from the artist.
Learn More -
To Make a Prairie: Pollination and Human Understanding
17 March–30 June 2026Building on the words of Emily Dickinson, "To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee," our spring exhibition explores how humanity came to understand one of nature's most essential relationships: the intricate partnership between plants and their pollinators.
Learn More
