What's New in the Herbarium
Last modified 1 September 1997
The Website
The newest addition to the herbarium is this website. Herbarium staff,
with the assistance of Matt Gitzendanner, a graduate student in the
Department of Botany, used most of spring and summer 1997 to prepare
materials for the website. We hope that the website will be useful not
only for providing information on the herbarium but also as a source of
botanical information. We are especially pleased that the historical information and the floras of Kamiak Butte and Moscow
Mountain will be useful teaching tools and help to educate the public
on local natural history.
The website remains under construction, especially the information on
Kamiak Butte and Moscow Mountain. We welcome your suggestions for
helpful modifications and ideas for new materials that could be added
(e-mail: hufford@mail.wsu.edu).
Public Outreach
Service to the public remains one of the primary activities of the Ownbey
Herbarium. Numerous government agencies, including the U.S. Department
of Fish and Wildlife, USDA Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management,
Washington State Weed Board, and various county weed boards, have used
the herbarium in the last year to obtain or confirm plant identifications
or get other information about regional plants. Individuals from
nongovernmental agencies, such as the Nature Conservancy, have also
visited the herbarium in the last year.
Herbarium staff have worked recently with local law enforcement to to
train officers to learn how to distinguish opium poppies from other
ornamental poppies. Our recent work with regional law enforcement
includes forensic botany during the investigations of a possible murder
near Longview and an accidental poisoning with water hemlock in Okanogan
County. We helped the Sheriff's Department in Columbia County resolve an
accidental poisoning by false morels (which can be mistaken for edible
morels!). On a Friday evening last summer, we worked with the Moscow
Police Department and a hospital in Lewiston to resolve that
Thermopsis montanum (golden banner) was responsible for the
nonfatal poisoning of a child who ate some of its pea-like fruits.
One of the most enjoyable and valuable outreach experiences for herbarium
staff is working with local primary and secondary schools. The Ecology
Club from Lincoln Middle School in Pullman visited the herbarium for much
of a day in the course of completing their Palouse Restoration Project.
The herbarium has also provided materials for Career Day at the Lincoln
Middle School. At the end of last spring, the third grade class from
Logos School in Moscow visited the herbarium, as they have each year. We
recently had a bulletin board in the herbarium devoted to flower drawings
sent to us by students at the Logos School.
School-age children from PS I Love You, sponsored by the Pullman
Department of Parks and Recreation and the Methodist Church, visited the
herbarium during the summer to learn how to press and mount plant
collections. Herbarium staff have also provided educational programs at
the meetings of local Boy Scout Troops.
The herbarium has provided specimens for public displays at the Boyer
Park Marina in Whitman County, at the Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center
in Stevenson, Washington, and at the Wings of Eagles Educational Center
(sponsored by the intertribal Friends of Early American Living History)
in Usk, Washington.
Incorporation of the Walla Walla College Herbarium
The herbarium from Walla Walla College, including both mounted and
unmounted specimens, was donated to the Marion Ownbey Herbarium in 1992.
Most of the specimens from the Walla Walla College Herbarium were
collected by Dr. Albert Grable and his students. The collections are
primarily from the Columbia Basin, northeastern Oregon, and various
localities in the western United States but also includes specimens from
the eastern United States and neotropics.
During Spring Semester 1995, curation and accessioning of the Walla Walla
specimens in the Ownbey Herbarium was completed. This resulted in the
addition of 23,000 specimens to the Ownbey Herbarium. The Walla Walla
College Herbarium is second only to the acquisition of the Suksdorf
collection in 1932 in number of specimens acquired by the Ownbey
Herbarium in a single gift.
The incorporation of the Walla Walla College Herbarium is a major gain
for the Ownbey Herbarium. It has significantly added to our coverage of
plants from the Columbia Basin and northeastern Oregon and added
extensively to our collections from the western United States.
Higinbotham Bryophytes
The Higinbotham bequest to the Department of Botany resulted in our
acquisition of approximately 9050 specimens of bryophytes collected by
Betty Higinbotham. The collections are from localities around the world.
Many of the bryophytes in the Higinbotham collection are unidentified,
and we are especially pleased that Dr. Judy Harpel, a bryologist with the
U.S.D.A. Forest Service, is helping to provide taxonomic identifications
for the specimens. The curation, accessioning, and filing of the
identified specimens from the Higinbotham collection began during Spring
Semester 1997 and continues.
Specimen Exchanges
A primary goal of the Marion Ownbey Herbarium is collection development.
The Ownbey Herbarium is among the major herbaria of the western United
States and houses nearly 350,000 specimens of plants. A primary goal for
the development of the Ownbey Herbarium is the taxonomic diversification
of the collection. That is, we seek to increase the number of species,
genera, and families that are represented in the herbarium. This is
important both for teaching about the diversity of plants and for
research on the evolution of plants. To achieve our collection
diversification goals, we have been actively exchanging duplicate specimens with other
herbaria and soliciting exchanges from
additional herbaria.
Databasing in the Herbarium
We will start a major, new project during Fall Semester 1997: the
development of an electronic database for collection data on specimens in
the Ownbey Herbarium. The databasing of specimen data has been a major
issue for natural history collections around the world. Easier access to
information from specimens and the ability to sort and search that
information are the driving forces behind the moves to database
collections. Unfortunately, limited funding has been available generally
to manage and complete database projects. The herbarium will be begin to
database families during Fall Semester 1997. We look forward to starting
the angiosperm family databasing with Saxifragaceae, a family of great
interest to various researchers in the Department of Botany, and then
extending to other families that are important to research at WSU.
Bryophytes (such as mosses and liverworts) have become a primary interest
of the USDA Forest Service in our region because of their importance for
understanding ecosystem dynamics and biodiversity in forests of the
Pacific Northwest. A second front of our databasing project will focus
on the bryophyte collection in the Ownbey Herbarium. We anticipate
working with the USDA Forest Service as the bryophyte database gets
underway.
Herbarium Tea
We have an informal gathering on the third Thursday of each month at 3
p.m. for coffee or tea and cookies. Herbarium tea provides the
biologists at WSU with the opportunity to take a break from teaching and
research to visit with colleagues. The teas help to introduce biologists
to activities in the herbarium and to build bridges among faculty with
diverse interests and between faculty and graduate students. Feel free
to join us for tea on one of our Thursday afternoons if you are on campus.
