The Herbarium Half-Earth dataset is a large and diverse dataset of herbarium specimens to date for automatic taxon recognition. The Herbarium 2021: Half-Earth Challenge dataset includes more than 2.5M images representing nearly 65,000 species from the Americas and Oceania that have been aligned to a standardized plant list.

This dataset has a long tail; there are a minimum of 3 images per species. However, some species can be represented by more than 100 images. This dataset only includes vascular land plants which include lycophytes, ferns, gymnosperms, and flowering plants. The extinct forms of lycophytes are the major component of coal deposits, ferns are indicators of ecosystem health, gymnosperms provide major habitats for animals, and flowering plants provide almost all of our crops, vegetables, and fruits.