2021 Herbarium Review

By guest writer Jan Sharp. Jan has volunteered her skills towards many facets of Museum operations over the last few years, including exhibit development, docenting, internal evaluation, and collections development. Her experience working within our herbarium, or pressed plant collection, over the past year has been summarized below. 

One of the nice things about some nature-oriented projects and hobbies is that many are solitary endeavors unimpacted by the pandemic. One such activity is collecting plant specimens from the wild for pressing, drying and mounting for the Cable Natural History Museum herbarium. The Museum already has an impressive collection of local plant specimens from 1896 and 1974-76. Over the last three years, we have been adding additional specimens to reflect how local flora are faring in this decade compared to the past.

Such periodic collections through the years may inform changes in the forest succession, impacts of fauna predation, and the impact of climate change. For instance, as a teenager staying for the summers in the area 50 years ago, I made a list of flowering plants in the area.  There are some I still have not found again the last few years, and conversely I have recently found invasive plants that are new to the area. While some of that may simply be normal forest succession, new invasives and local increases in the deer population seem to be having major impacts on some native plant species and their abundance. For example, over the course of my adolescence, I observed six different native orchid species in the area. It has been decades since I have come across any of them in the local area again.

Back in 2019, Jan assisted with facilitation of a Plant Pressing 101 workshop
through the Museum. As a volunteer, she has helped to guide other volunteers
in working with our herbarium - from field collecting to the final specimen.

So far, we have collected approximately 150 local species of flowering plants and trees. Plants that have been collected are both native and non-native, and mostly flowering specimens as they provide the best identification information. We have also started some series of plant growth specimens, from the smallest fresh seedling to full flowering mature plants, to use in educational exercises. 

Collections staff were surprised to find that our herbarium
contained no specimens of strawberry species. Jan became
our first collector to submit a common strawberry (Frageria virginiana) specimen. 

So, what’s next for the herbarium? We certainly plan on collecting more plants this coming spring and summer. Meanwhile for the winter, we are making a wish list of plants and the approximate time they flower as a guide to provide a steady stream of new specimens for the Museum. We are also completing the documentation on specimens collected this year: exact location (longitude/latitude), habitat found in, and identification such as genus species. Besides the actual labels on the mounts, the Museum has an electronic database including digital photos of each specimen. So, we have plenty to keep us busy through these snowy winter months, while we look forward to the first plants of spring to emerge!