Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) maintains a National Collection of Vascular Plants, internationally known by the acronym DAO (for Department of Agriculture, Ottawa). This is a premier collection of dried vascular plants. Located on AAFC’s Central Experimental Farm, it is the largest collection of its kind in Canada. Properly called a herbarium, it includes 1.5 million irreplaceable specimens protected in a climate-controlled environment. When adequately protected from moisture and pests, dried specimens can last for hundreds of years in the herbarium. This is a tremendous resource that allows identification of plants from anywhere in Canada and supports research on plant classification worldwide.