Tucked away in a basement facility on Utah State University’s Logan campus, the Intermountain Herbarium is a treasure trove of plant, fungi and seed specimens.
“It’s a hidden gem,” says Intermountain Herbarium Director Carl Rothfels. “We support research, teaching and outreach for academic professionals as well as the general public.”
Situated in the basement of The Junction dining hall, just north of Richards Hall at about 750 North 1050 East, the Intermountain Herbarium is the largest public herbarium in the Intermountain West. The facility houses more than 300,000 specimens and supports an online specimen database with multiple portals.
“These specimens, the oldest of which is more than 200 years old, provide a priceless snapshot of a particular plant in a particular place in a particular time,” says Rothfels, associate professor in the Department of Biology and the USU Ecology Center. “Herbaria collections like ours are foundational to botanical science, and are a valuable resource for a range of other disciplines, including the arts and humanities.”
Peter Adler, director of the USU Ecology Center and professor in the Department of Wildland Resources, says the herbarium’s staff and collections are key resources for scientists studying plant population and community ecology.
“We can’t perform this research unless we can identify species,” Adler says. “More and more research efforts rely directly on the specimens in herbarium collections. These specimens are being used to study long-term changes in flowering times, functional traits and even genetics.”
He adds the herbarium plays a critical role in training plant taxonomists of the future.
Faculty members from varied USU departments routinely bring their students to the herbarium, to make them aware of the resource, how to use it and to introduce them to its utility for research.
“The herbarium has been essential for a field-intensive botany course we teach each summer,” says wetlands ecologist Karin Kettenring, professor in the Department of Watershed Sciences and the USU Ecology Center. “We take students to the field in the morning and bring back plant samples in the afternoon to work on identification in the herbarium. The herbarium provides the equipment, various keys and guides, along with expertise and the incredible number of plant resources that we can use for verification purposes.”
Read the full story here: www.usu.edu/today/story/hidden-gem-usus-intermountain-herbarium-serves-scholars-professionals-and-citizen-scientists
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