Herbarium: Pteridium aquilinum

Norwich Castle's botany collections include a main herbarium of 50,000 vascular plants, mostly local material, but also containing exchange specimens from elsewhere in Britain and smaller collections from abroad.

John Drew Salmon (1802-1859) managed a brewery in Thetford, but was also an accomplished ornithologist and botanist. He amassed an impressive herbarium (collection of pressed preserved plants) of flowering plants, ferns, bryophytes and algae, especially from the Thetford area, but also from Surrey and further afield. On his death in 1859, in addition to his herbarium, Salmon also bequeathed birds' eggs and his natural history diaries from 1825 to 1837 to the Norwich Museum, as it was known then.