JCSET | Watershed Studies Institute Research Symposium
Incorporation of Plant Specimens from the late Raymond Athey from the Mississippi Purchase into the MSU Herbarium
Abstract/Description
The Murray State University Herbarium is home to 40,000 specimens with plenty of room for more. An herbarium is a facility that holds pressed and dried plant specimens for the purpose of documenting flora and research in botany and vegetation science. The Herbarium, housed and funded by the MSU Department of Biology, has come into new curation direction under Dr. Ingrid Jordon-Thaden, Assistant Professor of Botany. Dr. Jordon-Thaden and I have been working to be able to take in new specimens and incorporate older donations. Many sources have contributed to the MSU Herbarium specimens over the years. These sources include volunteers, Murray State University courses such as Field Botany and Systematic Botany, graduate student projects, and personal collections/donations. The majority of the specimens in the Herbarium have been uploaded to an online shared, NSF-funded database called SERNEC (Southeast Regional Network of Expertise and Collections), where the specimens can be viewed with all their information available, including their scientific name, family, date they were collected, who they were collected by, and location. This semester, my research has consisted of integrating a donation of specimens that was made a couple of years back by the spouse of the late Raymond Athey. His entire collection consisted of over 17,000 specimens. MSU Herbarium received four record books documenting his entire Jackson Purchase collection, and we received a portion of his collection of approximately 1700 specimens. The remainder of the collection was distributed amongst other Herbaria in the United States. His collection housed here at MSU focused on the native plants in the Jackson Purchase portion of the United States focusing mostly in Kentucky. I have prepped the specimens to be integrated into the herbarium by placing them into a -23-degree freezer for 72 hours, then placing them into a cabinet for storage until processing can be done. The portion I have been working on this spring, and will continue to work on, is the transcription of his written records (over 5,000) into an online data sheet, where I will then place them in alphabetical order by family. After I arrange the specimens in alphabetic familial order, I will proceed to mount the specimens and include all their important information: name, family, location, and collector. After they have been mounted, they will be photographed/digitized and uploaded to the SERNEC, so they can be viewed and used by others and integrated into the already-established Herbarium collection.
Incorporation of Plant Specimens from the late Raymond Athey from the Mississippi Purchase into the MSU Herbarium
The Murray State University Herbarium is home to 40,000 specimens with plenty of room for more. An herbarium is a facility that holds pressed and dried plant specimens for the purpose of documenting flora and research in botany and vegetation science. The Herbarium, housed and funded by the MSU Department of Biology, has come into new curation direction under Dr. Ingrid Jordon-Thaden, Assistant Professor of Botany. Dr. Jordon-Thaden and I have been working to be able to take in new specimens and incorporate older donations. Many sources have contributed to the MSU Herbarium specimens over the years. These sources include volunteers, Murray State University courses such as Field Botany and Systematic Botany, graduate student projects, and personal collections/donations. The majority of the specimens in the Herbarium have been uploaded to an online shared, NSF-funded database called SERNEC (Southeast Regional Network of Expertise and Collections), where the specimens can be viewed with all their information available, including their scientific name, family, date they were collected, who they were collected by, and location. This semester, my research has consisted of integrating a donation of specimens that was made a couple of years back by the spouse of the late Raymond Athey. His entire collection consisted of over 17,000 specimens. MSU Herbarium received four record books documenting his entire Jackson Purchase collection, and we received a portion of his collection of approximately 1700 specimens. The remainder of the collection was distributed amongst other Herbaria in the United States. His collection housed here at MSU focused on the native plants in the Jackson Purchase portion of the United States focusing mostly in Kentucky. I have prepped the specimens to be integrated into the herbarium by placing them into a -23-degree freezer for 72 hours, then placing them into a cabinet for storage until processing can be done. The portion I have been working on this spring, and will continue to work on, is the transcription of his written records (over 5,000) into an online data sheet, where I will then place them in alphabetical order by family. After I arrange the specimens in alphabetic familial order, I will proceed to mount the specimens and include all their important information: name, family, location, and collector. After they have been mounted, they will be photographed/digitized and uploaded to the SERNEC, so they can be viewed and used by others and integrated into the already-established Herbarium collection.
