There’s plenty of information around the country regarding herbaria, but it’s not that easily accessible. UH biology professor, Steven Pennings, wants to digitize the collection at the UH Coastal Center herbarium in order to make the collection available to the entire scientific community and attract researchers to Houston to research particular species, which will make the collection more valuable.
“The physical herbarium specimens are often of value for research, because scientists can sample them for genetic analyses or for studies of ecological interactions—for example, leaves contain traces of the herbivores that fed on the leaves,” Pennings said.
Digitizing the herbarium records, it will bring attention to the physical specimen that can be sampled.
According to Pennings, plant taxonomy is always changing, and the scientific names of older specimens need to be updated.
“Some samples were damaged by insects. Both of these issues point out the need for periodic curation of a collection if it is to maintain its value,” said Pennings.
Pennings and his team have organized all the samples and have added several new pressings to the collection. Next, they will scan the herbarium sheets to a computer and make them available online.
Pennings and his team are completing this project in collaboration with colleagues at a larger herbarium to upload the scans to a common online portal.
Image: Getty Images/iStock/Bogdan Kurylo
