Tucked away in a little-known corner of the Carnegie Mellon University campus is a one-of-a-kind resource for the botanical world -- at least on this side of the globe.

	"What We Collect: Recent Art Acquisitions" Where: The Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Carnegie Mellon University's Hunt Library, Fifth Floor. When: 9 a.m. to noon and 1-5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays; 1-4 p.m. Sundays (except. Nov. 23-26 and Dec. 15). The exhibition runs through Dec. 20. Admission: Free. Information: 412-268-2434; huntbot.andrew.cmu.edu.

The Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, located on the fifth floor of the Hunt Library, opened 45 years ago as the Rachel McMasters Miller Hunt Botanical Library, part of the life's work of the wife of former Alcoa president and chairman Roy A. Hunt. Through her love of gardening and books, she amassed an extensive library of botanical books and artwork.

Shifting over the years from collecting mostly older items to contemporary ones, the institute now has about 29,000 books, 30,000 works of art and 25,000 portraits of botanic artists, plus artists' biographical information, letters and manuscripts.

One challenge for James White and Lugene Bruno, curator and assistant curator of art, is simply making locals aware that this gem for botanical research exists.

One way they hope to expand people's understanding of the institute is through the current art exhibition, "What We Collect: Recent Art Acquisitions."

This eclectic show of works acquired over the past half-dozen years includes a bit of this and a bit of that -- watercolors and prints, older works and newer works, scientific works and art-for-art's-sake works. For Bruno, this was an opportunity to "make connections between things" and pair similar historic and contemporary work. In contrast to the institute's often more narrowly focused exhibitions, this one affords a look at the breadth of the institute's holdings.

The average person might be familiar with coffee-table-style books of plant drawings, but few non-botanists are aware of the variety of botanical art publications. Categories represented in the show include:

Florilegia: In the 17th century, wealthy landowners paid artists to draw and record every plant in their gardens. Basil Besler, overseer of gardens for a German bishop's palace, compiled one such massive, two-volume work, an engraving that is shown here. The actual gardens fell into ruin, but the books were so detailed that the gardens were re-created from them in 1998.

Flanking the Besler work are two watercolors by Kazuto Takahashi from a contemporary florilegium depicting every endangered plant species in Japan.

A celebrated flower book: Botany arguably reached its pinnacle in the 1700s, when Linnaeus developed his method of plant classification. Botany became a household hobby, and people liked books full of colorful illustrations accompanied by, pardon the pun, flowery prose and poetry.

"A Group of Hyacinths" by England's Sydenham Edwards was published in Robert Thornton's "A New Illustration of the Sexual System of Carolus von Linnaeus." Mounted next to the hyacinths is accompanying text from the book, reflecting the writing style of the time: "This plant, like most of the others of Spring extraction, in its wild state, hangs down its azure bells, and having a delightful scent, is one of the most agreeable gifts that Providence has bestowed upon mortals."

Floras and monographs: A flora is a complete list and description of all the plants in a particular region or country, while a monograph includes the most complete taxonomic information available on one plant group.

Works in this category include "Claytonia virginica," a delicate stipple engraving by famed artist Pierre-Joseph Redoute of Belgium (1759-1840), and a contemporary work by Diana Everett depicting one of the 150 species in her book on tulips of Kazakhstan, Turkey and Iran.

Pages from a 1700s-era English book serve a double purpose: to show samples from a flora of all the plants within 10 miles of London, and to illustrate the frowned-upon practice of "book cutting" -- ripping pages from books in order to sell the artwork piecemeal and thus make more money.

Different perspectives on trees: The curators highlight the stylistic variety in the world of botanical art, including scientific, educational and exhibition-only. Thus, we end up with pairings such as a free-form charcoal drawing of a maple tree by American Stanley Maltzman next to a detailed watercolor of a red maple by Anne Ophelia Todd Dowden, a Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) alumna who wrote and illustrated many books and recently celebrated her 99th birthday. Nearby is "Spinners," a pencil drawing of maple seed pods by Pittsburgher Harry Schwalb.

Horticultural works: Examples include lithographs by father-and-son artists Joseph and William Henry Prestele. Dad did nursery plates for sale to growers; son was the first illustrator in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Department of Pomology (fruits and fruit growing). Also included are books by Wilson Popenoe, the plant explorer who brought the avocado to the United States, with illustrations by his wife, Dorothy Kate Hughes Popenoe.

Plants and their pollinators: Several of Dowden's watercolors feature bees, moths, hummingbirds and various insects with plants. Nearby, a work by Brazilian Etienne Demonte acts as a sort of foil: He pictures a short-billed hummingbird getting nectar by piercing a flower at its base, thwarting the pollination process.

Algae, moss and slime molds: A little-known category of botanical art is drawings and paintings of plants on a microscopic level. One of the most famous artists in the exhibition is Pierre Jean Francois Turpin (1775-1840), whose representations of hairy canary clover and algae were probably commissioned by a chemist.

Printmaking techniques: These include wood engraving, etching or intaglio, and lithographs. One notable example is a work by Wilfred A. Readio, chairman of the Carnegie Institute of Technology art department from 1939-55. Visitors can see what is believed to be his working sketch of hostas next to the final lithograph, in which he has flipped the image.

White notes that the Hunt is unique within the Western Hemisphere -- only European institutions seem to do comparable work, typically collecting older volumes and artworks.

The institute's focus is admittedly specialized. It attracts academics such as botanists, biologists, historians, librarians and bibliographers. It mounts a triennial international exhibition, during which the American Society of Botanical Artists holds its meeting here.

But locals drop in, too. Garden clubs visit during art exhibitions, and Allegheny Highlands Botanical Art Society members serve as docents on Sunday afternoons, providing extra information for interested visitors. Backyard gardeners are just as welcome as university professors and museum curators.