Intermountain Herbarium grows online
Tucked away in the belly of central campus is Utah State University’s best kept botany secret, the Intermountain Herbarium.
Located under the Junction, the herbarium serves as a resource on plants not only for students, but for the general public.
“If you’re interested in plants and mushrooms, this is a good resource, come explore.” said Micheal Piep, the assistant curator.
The herbarium began in 1931 by Bassett Maguire, an American botanist, and was formed as a strong research facility for the state of Utah during a time when the nearest available plant collections were small or far away.
Now, the herbarium is the largest publicly owned herbarium in the intermountain region, hosting a collection of approximately 280,000 specimens from all over the world. The numbers increase every year as more specimens come in, assistant curator Piep said.
“I’ve been here over 30 years and the reputation of the Intermountain Herbarium has always been excellent.” said Richard Mueller, associate dean of the College of Science. “It’s a very important collection of plants in this region that really is kind of irreplaceable.”
The collection is currently archived online at www.intermountainbiota.org and run by the Southwest Environment Information Network or SEINet based in Arizona.
Other colleges and research facilities around the intermountain region are also pooling their data online through SEINet to create a richer, accessible resource, Piep said.
About 51 percent of the herbarium’s collection is archived already, he said. Of those specimens, 31 percent have a geo-referencing points and about 30 percent are imaged and available online.
“We’ve got some fairly old specimens,” Piep said. “Several from the 1800s, the oldest specimen that I’m aware of here in the herbarium was collected in Europe in the late 1700s, if I remember correctly.”
In addition to the research collections, the herbarium also hosts a fully cataloged reference library with 3,000-4,000 titles for students to study, as well as a workshop area supplied with microscopes and tools for research.
Students also have the option to check out or rent plant presses for drying specimens or colored picture slides for presentations or essays.
“We’re more than happy to set up the general public, visiting researchers, grad students, undergrads, whatever,” Piep said.
The herbarium is open Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. during the school year, and starting this semester, the staff holds an open hour every Wednesday from 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. to answer questions or give tours to visitors.
Due to its location, the herbarium is out of sight to many students and not is not very well known.
“I didn’t even notice it until my second year; my first year I was upstairs eating,” said Kolton Kendell, a sophomore in pre-physical therapy, “I don’t know, second year comes around and you just kind of explore a little bit more, and that’s when I noticed it.”
It was the herbarium’s colorful, eye-catching specimens that piqued his interest enough to look inside a few times, he said.
“There’s just a lot of really cool things in the windows that you can see, and it looks kinda whimsical? That’s a cool word for it. It just looks really different.” said Rebecca Ashby, an undeclared freshman.
Display cases filled with hand crafted plant and mushroom models fill the entrance area to draw the attention of passersby. During the Halloween and Christmas seasons the staff likes to decorate the herbarium for fun, Piep said.
Kendall considers the herbarium as one of the many lesser known places on campus with nice facilities.
“If you have an hour in between classes, just kind of mill around the building that you’re in,” Kendall said. “Odds are you haven’t checked it out cause you’re just in class and you wanna get out and hang with your friends, but we have really nice facilities so check it out. Explore, you’re here to learn.”
— miranda.lorenc@gmail.com or @miranda_lorenc