January 30, 2026
Shamrock Shockwave
The National Herbarium of Ireland digital collection of Irish plants
Ireland’s plant treasure goes online—commenters want Irish names and a friendlier site
TLDR: Ireland’s National Herbarium put thousands of Irish plant images online via DRI. Commenters cheer access but slam the clunky site and missing Irish names; others share global portals and applaud proper DOIs—showing digital plant archives are exciting, useful, and still rough around the edges.
The National Herbarium of Ireland just dropped a digital trove: 5,000+ scaled photos of Irish plant specimens now viewable through the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI), part of a half‑million‑strong collection. Sounds wholesome, right? Cue the comment section. First wave: UX outrage. User nephihaha called the site “not very user friendly” and roasted it for missing Irish‑language names. Suddenly, it’s less “botanical bliss” and more “Latin vs Gaeilge cage match.”
Then the botany pros rolled in. jyoung789 turned into the internet’s plant tour guide, pointing folks to global portals and saying you can even “find your nearest brick and mortar herbarium globally.” Meanwhile, metadata nerds high‑fived xattt, who cheered that the site finally uses DOIs—Digital Object Identifiers—properly, linking directly to the actual items. Yes, someone literally celebrated identifiers like they’re championship trophies.
DRI and the Herbarium say these time‑capsule specimens are gold for conservation and history, and the community agrees—if they can navigate it. The mood: awe for the archive, side‑eye for the website. Jokes flew about squinting at labels like CSI: Botany and “I came for shamrocks, stayed for metadata.” The collection is a win; the comments want it smoother, and more Irish names, stat.
Key Points
- •DRI published the National Botanic Gardens of Ireland’s digital collection of Irish plant specimens from the National Herbarium of Ireland.
- •The National Herbarium in Glasnevin, Dublin holds over 500,000 dried and documented plant specimens and ~20,000 plant product samples.
- •The new digital collection currently includes over 5,000 scaled images of herbarium specimens collected in Ireland.
- •This is the third Herbarium collection ingested into DRI, following Brunker and Praeger digital archives, totaling over 6,000 deposited objects.
- •Dr. Colin Kelleher highlighted the scientific, historical, and cultural value of herbarium specimens for conservation and research.