Plant ‘ library’ offers multitude of specimens
Deep in the bowels of a nondescript brick building at 1315 Kinnear Road in Columbus resides one of Ohio’s most interesting “libraries.”
Ohio State University’s Museum of Biological Diversity holds collections of a mind-numbing array of organisms. There are nearly inestimable numbers of insects, fishes, mollusks, birds, amphibians and reptiles, and even sound recordings.
Let us not forget the plants. A repository of plant collections is known as a herbarium, and the OSU museum houses one of the largest anywhere. Not counting lichens and mosses — there are plenty — the museum includes about 430,000 specimens, said herbarium director John Freudenstein.
Dozens of hermetically sealed cabinets in the herbarium have shelves stuffed with plant specimens. All this material was plucked from the wild by botanists and carefully pressed, dried, labeled with pertinent information, mounted on special paper and stored, theoretically in perpetuity.
Why go to this effort? Herbarium specimens serve as hard evidence of our planet’s plant life, present and past. Ohio has about 1,800 native plant species, and changes since European settlement have had great effects on our flora.
Eighty-seven species are considered extirpated — gone from Ohio. Listed as endangered are 258 plants, and 158 are threatened. Herbarium specimens tell us where these plants used to be, and when. Occasionally, an intrepid botanist, using clues in the herbarium, is able to rediscover a population thought to be long gone.
Especially exciting is the discovery of native plants not formerly known to occur in the state. Documentation of such finds via herbarium specimens is an essential part of the scientific record.
The accompanying photo shows a specimen that I collected nearly 24 years ago.
It is a plant known as southern monkshood
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When botanist Stanley Stine and I discovered it along a remote stretch of Scioto Brush Creek in southern Ohio, it was the first record for Ohio, and the first north of the Ohio River.
Herbarium collections are also invaluable in documenting shifts in phenology — blooming times — related to climate change. And DNA can be extracted from specimens, helping taxonomists better understand speciation of plants.
Botanists preparing atlases of regional flora depend heavily on herbarium collections to create plant distribution maps and describe habitats and other aspects of plants.
The OSU herbarium dates its founding to 1891, when botany professor John Kellerman formalized the collection. Some of the specimens far precede Kellerman, though. The oldest dates to 1839.
Technology has progressed far beyond that of Kellerman’s time, and most of the OSU collection has been imaged, digitized and put online. Take a look at herbar ium.osu.edu.
Better than a virtual herbarium visit is a trip to see the real thing. Next Saturday, the OSU museum holds its annual open house. This is a rare opportunity to see all the collections firsthand, including the herbarium. Details are at mbd.osu.edu.