The McGill University Herbarium currently comprises about 140,000 sheets, including specimens from the McGill College and Macdonald College Herbaria. It was founded in 1860 with the gift of 500 specimens collected by Dr. A.F. Holmes in Montreal in the early 1820's and is rich in 19th century collections from North America. More recent collections from Quebec, Ontario, and the circumpolar Arctic, including Greenland and Siberia, form the core of the collection. A large collection of Cyperaceae, especially temperate and arctic Carex worldwide, serve as vouchers for DNA sequence data. The database includes about 20,000 records currently digitized from the McGill University Herbarium.