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AILANTHUS Grows in Brooklyn
October 2005
In 2004, the Herbarium was awarded a three-year grant of $310,000 from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The goal of this project is to enter into the Garden's collections database, AILANTHUS, approximately 90,000 contemporary and historical herbarium specimens from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. These records will also be made available on the Garden's website using a searchable database. These efforts are part of a long-term goal to catalog the complete holdings of the Garden's Herbarium. This project is being overseen by Dr. Kerry Barringer, the Herbarium's curator, with assistance from Herbarium manager Paul Harwood. Benito Santos was hired in 2004 to focus largely on the data-entry aspect of this project. Other BBG staff that are working on this project include senior research technician Steven Glenn; director of Science Gerry Moore; database programer Anya Miretsky, and director of information technology Andrei Gourianov.
Herbarium curator Dr. Kerry Barringer preparing plant material for inclusion in the herbarium.
A herbarium is a collection of dried plant specimens. The specimens are usually mounted on durable paper and stored in protective folders and placed in special holding cabinets.
The BBG Herbarium is comprised of approximately 290,000 plant specimens used by researchers from around the world to study plants and their distribution. The primary arrangement of the specimens is based on major taxonomic groups (ferns, gymnosperms, angiosperms). Within each group, the specimens are arranged alphabetically by family. Within each family the genera and species are arranged alphabetically within each major geographic area (North America, South America, etc.). Previously all North American material was arranged together, except specimens from New York which were foldered separately. Work through this grant will also permit the separate foldering of material collected from Connecticut and New Jersey.
The majority of contemporary specimens in the Herbarium have been collected from the tri-state area by current Garden staff who are conducting studies on the local flora, such as the New York Metropolitan Flora Project and Dr. Barringer's current floristic research on the Franklin Parker Preserve in the New Jersey Pinelands. Among the historical specimens from the region are collections found nowhere else, such as the George Scarborough collection from southern New Jersey, the George Hulst collection (1860s), the Henry Dautun collection (1890s), and others from Lake George and Long Island.
Museum technician Benito Santos Lorenzo repairing an herbarium specimen.
This project will enable researchers to compare these contemporary and historical records in new ways—from analyzing changes in the distribution of plant species over time to exploring the decline of native species and the spread of invasive species—and help to build a more accurate model of the contemporary environment. The result will be increased awareness and use of the collections in Brooklyn Botanic Garden's Herbarium.
Paul Harwood is involved with the preliminary checking of the current nomenclature and the refoldering of the specimens. Kerry Barringer, Steve Glenn, and Gerry Moore are checking identifications. Besides data entry, Benito Santos assists with specimen remounting and repairs with herbarium mounter Christine Muomo. Anya Miretsky and Andrei Gourianov are involved in making the data available over the Internet from the Garden's website. So far, records for over 25,000 specimens have been entered into the database as a result of this NSF-funded project.