The Newberry College Herbarium
Science & Math Building Room 231
Curator: Charles N. Horn, PhD
GENERAL INFORMATION ON HERBARIA
A HERBARIUM SERVES as a repository for pressed and dried plant material. These collections (or specimens) are a permanent record of where and when a plant existed in nature. Herbaria (plural of herbarium) have several important functions:
Provides a reference collection for the identification of plants.
Specimens provide information on the location and time a plant grew in the past. This information can be used to predict the future for a plant species.
The herbarium is a repository for voucher specimens for flora projects; documenting the distribution of a species and recording information on what species are found at a location. For example, I have specimens to document the plants found at Lynch's Woods Park in Newberry County.
The herbarium is a repository for voucher specimens of research projects as a documentation for ecological surveys as well as material for anatomical and morphological research.
Serves as a base collection for teaching botany classes. Our collection is used in a number of botany classes I teach.
WHAT MAKES A HERBARIUM COLLECTION VALUABLE?
Herbaria are of value because they contain many bits of information in a
historical sense - plants collected at a particular location at a particular
time. The oldest
herbarium is the Naturkundemuseum Kassel, in the Federal Republic of Germany; it
was established in 1569 (information from Index Herbariorum).
In order for specimens to remain preserved for hundreds of years, several concerns need to be addressed relative to maintaining a collection. First, specimens are glued (or attached in some similar way) on sheets of approximately 11x17 inch paper. This makes for ease of reviewing the specimens, keeps all material together, yet visible, and documents a single collection. Second, the collection needs to be preserved to prevent damage, thus are most commonly stored in air-tight cabinets. Several concerns are evident when specimens are not properly stored, including specimens loose color when exposed to light, changes in humidity can hurt the plants and glue, and of greatest importance, insects can damage exposed specimens. Third, and for convenience sake, the collection needs to be in an order so persons can find specimens quickly. Typically, specimens are either filed alphabetical by family, then by genus, or the families are arranged in systematic order using a recent evolutionary scheme.
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This page copyright by Charles N. Horn, first
generated 10 April 2005, last updated
13 March 2007.
Department of Biology and Chemistry | Newberry College, Newberry, South Carolina