What is an herbarium?

Herbarium specimens are plants that have been pressed, dried, and accessioned into a museum collection. Each preserved specimen is labeled with information about where and when it was collected. These specimens capture unique information about species ecology and form. As libraries of biodiversity, herbaria are essential to understanding how plant populations and species distributions change over time.

Herbarium specimens serve as a road map back to populations, allowing researchers to revisit the same sites years later to see if those trees are still present or if the plant community has changed.

Basic information, Kew Royal Botanic Gardens: http://apps.kew.org/herbcat/gotoWhatIsHerbarium.do

An fellow herbarium enthusiast's blog: https://herbariumworld.wordpress.com/

How herabrium records can be used: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bij.12517/abstract

Browse records from the Chicago Region: http://symbiota4.acis.ufl.edu/seinet/vplants/portal/index.php

A large digitized natural history collections resource: https://www.idigbio.org/

Funding for this workshop comes from the National Science Foundation through the Great Lakes Invasives Network: http://greatlakesinvasives.org/portal/index.php