New York Botanical Garden - Research Library

Research Library

Founded in 1899, the LuEsther T. Mertz Library is considered to be the largest, most comprehensive botanical library in the Americas. In addition to botany, horticulture, the Library’s collections are used for studies in fields as diverse as history, anthropology, landscape and building design, architectural history, ethnobotany, economic botany, urban social history, and environmental policy. In addition to current scholarly books and serials, the Mertz Library holds many rare, and historically important works ranging from medieval herbals, to 17th-century depictions of the princely gardens of Europe, to accounts of botanical exploration and discovery in the 18th century, to the writings of Carl von Linné (Linnaeus) and Charles Darwin.