The Herbarium of National Taiwan University (TAI) was founded by Yushun Kudo in 1929, one year after the establishment of the Taihoku Imperial University. The Herbarium is housed in a separate two-floor building adjacent to the main gate of the university. The TAI collection currently includes approximately 250000 specimens of vascular plants with more than 1000 types. The collection is strongest in vascular plants from Taiwan, as well as historically valuable collections from North Sakhalin, Kuril Islands, Hokkaido, Ryukyu Islands, Micronesia and Hainan Island. The collection was built largely as the result of research collections by the curators, staff and students of TAI and augmented by exchanges and bequests made over the past 77 years.

In 1947 when the Taihoku Imperial University became the National Taiwan University, the Department of Botany was charged with the management and financing of the herbarium. During the reorganization of the College of Life Science in 2003, the herbarium was transferred to the Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

Due to its long history, the herbarium has served as the central systematics and floristics resource for Taiwan and eastern Asia. In addition the herbarium is useful for identification, teaching, and research in biodivisity, ecology, phytogeography, etc.

The local flora researches will remain an important activity at the TAI Herbarium, but more emphasis will be given in the future to the digitization of specimens and historical botanical books. In 2001 the herbarium received a large grant from the National Science Concil through its National Archive Digitization program to computerize the collections, and this work is an ongoing project. As of year 2007, label Data and images from approximately 72,000 specimens are now accessible at the website http://tai2.ntu.edu.tw/default.htm