Thursday, October 29, 2009

Amanda positions a Maple specimen in a plant press

We "vouchered" a list of Asian Maples this week. That is to say we took herbarium specimens to represent specific plants that are in the collections of the Arboretum. It's likely that whoever collected the seeds that the plants were grown from, "vouchered" their collection, that is, took a specimen from the plant they collected the seed from. This spring we "vouchered" the plants when they were in flower. We can't have enough specimens. Actually, those three are the ones we want: 1 to represent the plant the seed was collected from; 2 our plant in flower; and 3 our plant with fruit.

Ours will be added to the existing collection of over 650,000 specimens. We just recently learned that the Herbarium will be able to stay in place through the renovation of the Administration Building scheduled to begin late next year.

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