Dover Herbarium

(04-21-10) Ulysses S. Washington, JR Cooperative Extension Center and Herbarium at Dover University

This herbarium trip was a real treat. One for the books. One for my book anyway. The Curatorial Department at Longwood Gardens took a handful of us students to yet another herbarium. (Have you missed the other Herbariums we’ve visited? Check them out under the Herbarium section for Garden Visits.)

(haha, I loved this… Just in case you missed the really big sign on the building!)

This herbarium, I must say, was by far my favorite. Now I don’t want to slight any of the other amazing herbarium’s we’ve visited; each has its own charisma and character which is worth noting. But this one… this one wins the prize. Not sure what prize exactly, but it wins it! We started out by meeting the folks who run the herbarium; Art Tucker and Susan Yost. (Art Tucker is the author of The Encyclopedia of Herbs)

(Art Tucker and Susan Yost)

Before we even made it into the herbarium itself, we took time to look around. In the hall, in the display cabinets, in the bathroom… wait, what? Yes… the bathrooms! (lots of cool collected materials were all over the walls!)

When we finally ventured into the herbarium space, my initial thought was ‘Whoa, that’s a lot of light!”. It was actually a shocking amount of natural light. I know what you’re thinking.. isn’t that bad for archival items? (At least, that’s what I was thinking…) And… yes! But not to worry, they enclose all of their material; only if an item is brought out for study is it in natural light.

We were able to see their economic botany related collections as well. Shown below is part of their botanical beed collection. They have the drawers and materials organized by continent. Many of the materials were actually from the African continent and purchased from native tribes there.

(This is  an old vasculum case, used for collecting specimens many years ago. It’s quite neat, there is a space for the plants and then a small section for lunch!)

There are a lot of materials in the archives that some might be surprised about. One of them for me was a box with squirrel feces. This was in their larger collection of non-botanical pharmaceuticals. As Art said, “Take 2 and call me in the morning”, haha!

Other collections included botanically made buttons (from different wood materials), vernacular perfumes, Victorian trading cards, a large fiber collection including hemp, mammoth hair, tofu fiber; basically anything animal, vegetable, or mineral that has a botanical or ethnobotanical value is in this herbarium! Or also, as the Victorian trading cards may suggest, anything that documents the usage of botanical materials in our history.

(Here Art is showing us one of the specimens of algae in the collection)

(This was so impressive to me; they have actual proper viewing spaces for the specimens! It runs the whole length of the 2nd floor.)

Having spent some of my college ‘career’ helping out in my university herbarium, I’ve had some decent exposure to specimen mounting. But I was excited to know that part of our herbarium tour included a specimen mounting demonstration. (I wanted to check and see if I’d been taught right!). To the credit of Andrews University, I indeed was taught correctly. At least, if you consider the Dover Herbarium’s methods as being correct; which you probably should ;).

One of their faithful volunteers gave us an overview of how its done. He showed us what elements go on each page, such as the properly compiled label, the envelope to hold broken or small pieces, and the herbariums stamp.

Although the herbarium uses the dip method with some specimens, we were shown how they perform the spatula and needle method. Once the glue is applied, they use washers to weight down the specimen as it dries. They also use pre-cut wooden blocks to allow for stacking of the specimens.

(Showing us the page layout)

(The specimen is all ready to dry!)

Overall, I think we all really enjoyed the lesson even though many of us had already had a chance to do the mounting from previous opportunities. The other fun thing about this herbarium? They took us out to their favorite restaurant! Okay, that’s completely unrelated… but still :)