The Don McNair Herbarium

The Don McNair Herbarium houses a collection of over 14,500 specimens, including Angiosperms (flowering plants), Gymnosperms (conifers) and Pteridophytes (ferns). The collections focus is on the flora diversity of the Mid North Coast and Hunter regions of New South Wales and the arid zone flora of New South Wales, South Australia, Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory.

The Herbarium has been built on 60 years of collecting by its founder, Dr Don McNair, and donations from many other community collectors. Today it continues to grow with the lodgement of specimens used in research and donations from organisations and individuals.

The collection is a valuable resource for plant identification, student learning and research, and specimen data provides a spatial and temporal map of the changes in flora distribution and loss in the Hunter region. It also provides a historical record and ancient DNA fingerprint of the regional flora.

Both student and community member volunteers continue to be a vital part of the Herbarium, donating their time and expertise to prepare and catalogue specimens and digitise the collection.

History and Vision

The late Dr Don McNair (1920 – 2014); Honorary Doctor of Science, (1996) was a Novocastrian who combined his career as an auto-electrician with an extraordinary passion for the Australian native flora and its ecology. He was a meticulous collector of plant specimens for almost 70 years and undertook extensive floral surveys. Thanks to his passion, forethought and dedication, the Don McNair Herbarium contains a record of the floral diversity of the Hunter Region since the 1950s.

Don donated his collection as a gift-in-kind to the University of Newcastle and worked with volunteers and staff of the University to establish the Herbarium in his name. He provided a generous bequest to the University to assist in sustaining the Don McNair Herbarium and to foster postgraduate research in plant identification and conservation.

Don was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Newcastle in 1996, recognising his lifetime work in botany and his remarkable contributions to the Hunter community.

Don’s vision for the Herbarium was that:

“The Herbarium should be a vibrant working unit supporting the research and teaching of The University and engaging with the community in the areas of Plant Taxonomy, Ecology and Natural History Illustration, and itself continuing to build the collection for perpetuity”.

Collections

The collection is made up of the main specimen collection, as well as additional reference collections for use by students and the community. The Herbarium also holds a collection of botanical illustrations, digital flora images and a library, resources that are used as additional tools to assist in plant identification.

All of the collections are catalogued and digitised, and held on an internal access database platform whose data can be made available on request. In 2023 the collection was rehoused in a secure climate and pest-controlled storage area with separate workspaces for volunteers and students.

The collection can be accessed by appointment by contacting the Collections Manager.

Why Support

The Don McNair Herbarium collection is a critical resource to assist in our understanding of the human and environmental pressures being placed on the flora of the region.

It can be used for innovative research into the understanding of the environment, its cultural connections and how to ensure its sustainable use and management for future generations.

It also provides a valuable tool to train students in the skills needed to work in the environmental sector and provides a resource for the community to learn about the importance of the region’s flora.

The wider Hunter region supports over 100 locally endemic plant species that occur nowhere else and provides habitat for more than 110 threatened species.

How you can support the Don McNair Herbarium