Herbaria are collections of dried preserved specimens that document the identity of plants and fungi. They represent reference collections with many and varied functions including identification, research and education.

The Herbarium (HITBC) of Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) was established in 1959, and is one of the important supporting platforms of XTBG. It provides technical support services for the garden's disciplinary development, and also offers technical services to local forestry, environmental protection, landscaping, customs, public security, and science popularization agencies.

XTBG Herbarium mainly collects vascular plant specimens from the tropical region of southern Yunnan, with extensions to the subtropical areas of Yunnan and the tropical regions of Southeast Asia. It also houses voucher specimens for regional forest community fixed-position research, seed voucher specimens, and voucher specimens for horticultural conservation. It is a regional tropical herbarium with a distinct focus on tropical plant collections.

The herbarium primarily preserves vascular plant specimens. Pteridophyte specimens are arranged according to the Ching system, gymnosperms according to the Cheng Wan-chun system, and angiosperms according to the J. Hutchinson system; within each family, genera and species are arranged alphabetically.

As of January 2019, the herbarium held 220,000 specimens, including 167,500 primary specimens (containing 757 type specimens), all of which have been digitized. A data management and publishing system (http://hitbc.xtbg.ac.cn) was established in 2018. All data are expected to be available online for sharing within the next few years.