The Herbarium housed at the Department of Botany, Osmania University, Hyderabad, was established in 1930 and indexed in global directory of herbaria with the acronym HY. The herbarium collections are a potential resource for botanical research and floristic assessment. Its herbarium Holdings comprise 7,025 specimens to 1503 genera and 3,628 species under 167 families of seed plants, arranged as per bentham & Hookers system of classification (1862-1883). Among these, 1602 specimens were from outside India, via, Australia (66 spp.), Great Britain (15 spp.), Mexico (7 spp.), Scotland (Edinburgh: 20 spp.), Singapore (1 spp.) and USA (1,479 spp.). The herbarium (HY) has played a crucial role in documenting  developing interactive identification keys for the Angiosperms of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana  state. Osmania University herbarium collections are the basis for furthering research in Taxonomy, Ecology, Palynology and Phytodiversity Conservation. Through continuous enrichment of herbarium collections and preservation efforts, HY continues to provide invaluable base-line data as an opportunity to study change in flora due to shift in landuse, pollution, climate change, and alien introductions, and the fall out  on local plant diversity, ecological dynamics and evolutionary processes.