Botany Collections

Edward L. Greene Collection on Botany

Approximately 4,000 books and periodical volumes were left to the University upon botanist Edward L. Greene's death in 1915, along with his extensive herbarium (located in Galvin Life Sciences Building) and his manuscripts (located in University Archives).

Comprising one of the finest botany collections in the country, Greene's library includes many of the great early herbals as well as numerous contemporary editions of Linnaeus. The earlier imprints are predominantly West European, while nineteenth-century imprints are mostly North American. The major languages are Latin, English, French, and German.

Titles are listed in A Catalog of the Edward L. Greene Collection (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Memorial Library, 1986) and also in the main library catalog.

The collection is supplemented with works collected by Rev. Julius A. Nieuwland, CSC. Father Nieuwland, a chemist, was a graduate student under Edward Greene at Catholic University and shared his teacher's interest in the history of botany. He built a substantial collection of early botanical works financed through the sale of microscopic slides of plant tissues from his own herbarium. Nieuwland's herbarium, containing even more specimens than Greene's, is also housed in the Galvin Life Sciences Building.