Fort Lewis’ internationally known plant species collections have a new home in Berndt Hall Herbarium

Fort Lewis has a new library on campus, sort of. It's a library, that is, if the "books" you're looking for are living things.

The new Fort Lewis Herbarium, a part of the recently opened Berndt Hall Biology & Agriculture Wing, offers students and faculty a functional repository of plant collections from around the region and beyond, some dating back to the 1960s. The Herbarium is a sort of combination natural history museum and reference library, where students and other researchers interested in the region's botany can learn from specimens in the collections.

Prior to opening of the Herbarium, Fort Lewis' internationally known collections of regional plant species were dispersed and disorganized, scattered throughout various departments and offices. The new Herbarium unites these into a single, organized, accessible, and cataloged collection.
"The unique and interesting collections that we have finally have a space worthy of them," says Biology Department Chair Shere Byrd. "Rather than being boxed away in dusty shoe boxes, they’ll be taken care of and treated like a valuable resource, as they should be. It generally makes using the collections possible, rather than a total hassle."

The $17.9 million Biology & Agriculture wing replaces the old section of Berndt Hall that previously held classrooms, labs and faculty offices. The new wing is almost three times larger than the old structure and includes exciting new features such as a lab exclusively for the use of student researchers, a student study room, and the Herbarium.

The Herbarium houses taxonomically arranged collections of preserved plant specimens. Plants are picked, dried flat, and mounted on archival paper along with information describing the plant, who collected it, and location. These are stored in metal cabinets following a classification system for ease of access. The Herbarium itself is 30 feet by 19 feet, and the room is divided into research areas and the cataloged specimen-storage cabinets.

"An herbarium the size of the one we have is unusual in an undergraduate-only institution," says Bird. "Most herbaria are found associated with botanical gardens or large research institutions. The fact that we’ve had faculty, students, and local naturalists contributing interesting specimens to this collection for years makes it a rare resource."

As the Herbarium curator, Assistant Professor of Biology Ross McCauley is charged the cataloging and managing of the specimen collection. This involves arranging specimens according to a classification system, repairing and mounting specimens, working on database maintenance, controlling access to the collection, and fielding data requests from researchers. McCauley also monitors and controls the contact of living plant material from outside the room to prevent the introduction of insect pests. If material is to be introduced, it must first be placed in a freezer to kill pests.

"This collection has been recognized at the international level since the mid-1980s, but due to the lack of facilities we had prior to our new building, most of the collection was unorganized and inaccessible, packed away in boxes," says McCauley. "The exciting thing now is that we have a great looking, functional, and organized collection that is actually useful for students and the community. I’ve already had a number of researchers over the past year requesting data from our collections."

McCauley estimates the overall collection boasts some 15,000 specimens. Most of these are species that occur in southwestern Colorado, and as a whole is the single largest collection of plants from the San Juan Mountain region.

"For students, having access to a properly curated and maintained herbarium is not something found at most small liberal arts colleges," says McCauley, who was hired in 2008 to both teach and manage the Herbarium. "The Fort Lewis Herbarium provides a library of properly identified plant species that the students can access to learn the proper names of species they encounter. It also provides material for teaching recognition of other important and less common species that the students may not generally encounter."

Benefits, though, go beyond the campus, McCauley adds. "People in the community interested in plants can access the collection to check identifications. I have heard interest from members of the Colorado Native Plant Society in doing just that. And to the scientific community the collection is very valuable. It serves as a documentation of the occurrence of specific species within our area, and in some cases documenting changes in the light of land-use change and climate change."

And those opportunities can only benefit the students -- or whoever -- gets to explore the world of botany through the collection now available in the new Herbarium, says McCauley. "I think it's really good to involve students in research," he says. "I like showing students what’s cool about plants and helping those who are trying to figure out what they want to do by introducing them to different areas of biology they might not have considered before."

Learn more about the Fort Lewis College Biology program here.