The MSU Herbarium was founded in 1863 with the donation of a large collection of plants from Michigan and the eastern U.S. Today, we remain focused on plant and fungal diversity from Michigan, but the collection is also rich in plants from Mexico and southeast Asia, and lichens from the Caribbean and the subantarctic region. With over half a million specimens, the MSU Herbarium is among the 50 largest herbaria in the United States, whereas the lichen collection, with 120,000 accessioned collections, is among the 10 largest in North America and, because of its geographical scope, of international importance.

This dataset contains only specimens collected in the following regions (if they exist in this collection):

Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, and Zambia.