Each volume includes list of members, and "objects of the institute" (except v. 31, which has no list of members). Beginning with v. 12, a list of the papers contained in preceding volumes is issued regularly with each volume.

This book contains brief biographies, portraits and pictures of the specimens that the botanists were noted for. The botanists discussed range from Joseph Trimble Rothrock, an American environmentalist, recognized as the "Father of Forestry" in Pennsylvania to Charles Wilkins Short, a Kentuckian who discovered several species of plants and has six species of plants named after him, who also practiced medicine and taught materia medica.

Includes list of members.