The Toronto Erindale (TRTE) Herbarium Collection is administered and overseen by the Department of Biology at the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM). The Collection, founded in 1969, houses about 95,000 specimens of vascular plants, including the extensive collections of Paul F. Maycock and Peter W. Ball. Geographically, the herbarium’s main focus is on vascular plant specimens from Ontario, but important collections are also available from Québec and the Canadian high Arctic. Small quantities of specimens are available from all other regions of Canada, United States, Western Australia, New Zealand, and West Africa (Nigeria, Sierra Leone). Taxonomically, our herbarium is particularly strong in its representation of sedges (genus Carex), mainly from eastern Canada and, to a lesser extent, from elsewhere in Canada and the United States.

The data in this collection resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The Collection currently has over 10,000 digitized records and will continue to grow as we digitize more samples in the years to come. The data is maintained by the UTM Library to host the images and metadata, which are then imported into the Canadian Biodiversity Information Facility (Canadensys) and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) for national and international discoverability and access.

Visitors seeking to use these important research collections of the herbarium for monographic, floristic, or other plant taxonomic research are welcome, and should contact the Curator of the Herbarium Collection for physical access to the specimens.