Herbaria, or historical collections of pressed and dried plant specimens, serve as physical records of how plants change over time. As the climate crisis continues, herbaria have become increasingly relevant to the study of plant responses to climate change and as documents of existing biodiversity. While the botanical value of herbarium specimens cannot be understated, they have a striking aesthetic quality. This exhibition is the result of ongoing conversations regarding the intersection of art and science, viewed through the lens of herbarium specimens. Throughout the process of selecting the material, scientists and artists alike joined us in this conversation, bringing their professional and personal perspectives. By presenting these images to…

Digital images from Vassar’s herbarium have been included in “Changing Forms – Metamorphosis in Myth, Art and Nature 1650-1700,” an exhibit on display now through December 19 at the Francis Lehman Loeb Art Center.  The exhibit includes a print based on the Greek myth of Philemon and Baucis, who upon death were transformed by Zeus (Jupiter of the Romans) into intertwining oak and linden trees.  The oak symbolizes strength and steadfastness, while the linden symbolizes love and fertility.  Herbarium specimens of oak and linden were used as illustrations in the exhibition catalogue and the object card for Henrick Gout’s print of Adam Elsheimer’s Jupiter and Mercury in the House of…

This summer, our EMMA mobile team travelled to four different Hudson Valley herbaria and digitized 6,400 specimens.  Two members of our team, Allison Carrenza ‘23 and Garrett Goodrich ‘23, participated as Fellows in Vassar’s Undergraduate Research Summer Institute (URSI).  On September 29, Garrett and Allison presented a poster about their work at the 2021 URSI symposium.  Their poster summarized progress on the EMMA digitization project, illustrated how digitized herbaria can be used to study the spread of invasive species, and outlined next steps for the project.  You can read more about the URSI symposium here: https://www.vassar.edu/news/summer-research-program-culminates-symposium-and-project-presentations  Photo: Allison Carranza ‘23, Garreet Goodrich ‘23 and Professor Schlessman at the URSI symposium.

BY LARRY HERTZ Photos by Karl Rabe. Video by Damian Zapien and Jim Sulley. For more than a century, researchers at the 8,000-acre Mohonk Preserve, located about 15 miles west of the Vassar campus, have been documenting the changing ecology of the region, maintaining a laboratory of hundreds of species of plants and animals. That documentation includes the preserve’s herbarium, a collection of more than 3,000 pressed and dried plant specimens that have been collected and catalogued since the preserve was established. Read on…

This summer’s Botanical Society of America “Botany 2021” virtual meeting included a special session hosted by the Society of Herbarium Curators called “NOT Your Average Specimen.” Presentations highlighted noteworthy specimens that help to engage stakeholders and contribute to a broader understanding of the importance of herbaria. Professor Schlessman’s talk “Herbarium Specimens as Art,” focused on three specimensthat were included in Mark Dion’s cabinet of curiosities style work “Universal Collection” which was developed by a Vassar class on museums that was co-taught by Dion and Vassar Anthropologist Anne Pike-Tay. You can view to Professor Schlessman’s talk by clicking on the mp4 below, and you can learn more about “Universal Collection” here:…

Our second stop of the summer was at the Daniel Smiley Research Center (DSRC), of the Mohonk Preserve in New Paltz, New York. We were fortunate enough to work alongside Jordan Williams, a Digitization Technician working towards the digitization of the entirety of their collection, and we really appreciated her company! Through the comparison of our digitization procedures, we were able to update our methods, resulting in a process that is over three times more efficient. Implementing many of these changes immediately, and with Jordan’s help, we were able to image over 2,000 specimens spanning across 116 families in under five days.  While each herbarium we have encountered has had…

This past week, we had the opportunity to work in Connecticut digitizing Highstead Arboretum’s herbarium. Implementing all of the changes we made to our procedures at Mohonk, we finished imaging over 1,400 specimens representing 323 genera in just four days. This collection was not only pristine, but it was also the first herbarium associated with an arboretum that we have encountered. Because of this, we were able to get much more familiar with cultivated specimens, cultivar nomenclature, and hybrid species.  Being six weeks into our URSI project, we have really noticed our new field botany skills. Starting on Tuesday, during our drive down, we noticed an odd mycoheterotrophic plant (meaning…

Our first stop as a mobile digitizing team this summer was the Edmund Niles Huyck Preserve, located a little over 75 miles from Vassar’s campus in Albany County, New York.  The Preserve was founded through gifts from the Huyck family in 1931, and has been growing ever since. Dedicated to education, recreation, conservation, and research, the Preserve boasts over 2,000 acres and has substantially contributed to the field of ecology by hosting researchers such as Eugene Odum (the “father of ecosystem studies”) and Donald Griffin (who was the first scientist to describe bat echolocation). After 3 days of work making over a hundred annotation labels, encountering 308 genus folders, and…

The Vassar College Herbarium is almost as old as the college itself.  It was established in 1865 by Professor of Natural History Sanborne Tenney, one of the nine original faculty.  Just as Maria Mitchell’s observatory was key to providing a top-notch education in astronomy; collections of animals, plants, minerals, etc. were essential for studying Natural History, which at the time encompassed much of what we now call the Natural Sciences.  Collecting plants, pressing them, and affixing them to pages of a book to make a personal herbarium was a popular activity for Victorian women, so it is likely that some of Vassar’s first students came already well acquainted with the…

Herbaria, catalogued collections of pressed and dried plant specimens, enable scientists to learn about ecosystems of the past. But the data on where and when the plants lived and died can also provide vital insights about the future. Thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation, the clues contained in these collections at Vassar and other nearby institutions will soon be available to researchers worldwide. Read More (You will leave this site)