Botantists at the National Museum of Natural History work to discover the diversity of plant life in the water and on the land and understand the evolutionary origin of this diversity. The plant collections of the National Museum of Natural History's Department of Botany are among the most important worldwide. This vast and intensely managed collection of over 5 million specimens represents a premier national and international resource. Here you can explore and download free to use plant images from the museum. Horticulturalists at Smithsonian Gardens maintain living plant collections with thousands of unique items, including thousands of orchids.