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
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Emma Lucy Braun field notebooks
Braun (1889–1971) was a pioneer in the fields of plant ecology and conservation. The result of 25 years of fieldwork and 65,000 miles of travel, her Deciduous Forests of Eastern North America (Philadelphia, Blakiston, 1950) remains the only work of its scope on the topic. She was the first female president of the Ecological Society of America (1950) and was listed by the Botanical Society of America as one of 50 outstanding botanists of the United States (1956).
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Margaret Ursula Mee watercolors
Mee (1909–1988) explored the Brazilian jungles on numerous expeditions between 1958 and 1964 before concentrating on the Amazonas from 1964 to 1988. She collected plants and painted others on-the-spot. The Institute has several watercolors by Mee.
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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.
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