The Singapore Herbarium (international acronym SING) houses today more than 650,000 herbarium specimens backed by the spirit collection. The Herbarium mainly concentrates on plant collections from Malesian region, such as Peninsular Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines and New Guinea, with the most extensive collections from Singapore and Peninsular Malaysia dating from the 1880s. Out of these, about 6,800 are classified as types. In recent years, all the type specimens of vascular plant taxa have been digitized.

Current taxonomic research at SING Herbarium concentrates on Orchidaceae (Dr Hubert Kurzweil), Zingerberaceae (Jana Leong-Skornickova), and the Malesian mosses (Benito C. Tan). Two of our staff members (Serena Lee and Hassan Ibrahim) also participate in the preparation of the new vascular flora of Peninsular Malaysia.

Dr. Hubert Kurzweil is involved in various taxonomic and morphological studies in Orchidaceae. In collaboration with botanists in the United Kingdom he is currently revising the genus Calanthe, a terrestrial orchid group with great horticultural potential. It will ultimately result in the publication of a comprehensive, well-illustrated book on the genus. Other projects undertaken by him include the taxonomic accounts of several orchid genera for the Flora of Thailand Project as well as contributions to thevery diverse but poorly known orchid flora of Myanmar.

Jana Leong-Skornickova is working on Asian Zingiberaceae. Her primary interest focuses on the genus Curcuma. She is currently revising Curcuma for the Indian Subcontinent. Her other research interests cover taxonomy and nomenclatural history of plant names, especially those of gingers in Indian Subcontinent and Borneo. She is an Assistant Editor of Garden?s Bulletin Singapore.

The SING Herbarium sends material on loan to practicing taxonomists on request, and also in exchange to recognized institutes (see Index Herbariorum), both locally and abroad. The herbarium also publishes a good standing and well respected botanical journal known for more than half a century as the Gardens Bulletin Singapore. Currently the editor in charge is Dr. Benito C. Tan. The herbarium also plays an advisory role in identifying both wild and cultivated plant species from Singapore.