Typical: Astragalus cusickii var. packardiae
Covered in flower dissection illustrations by Rupert Barneby — we should all…
Typical: Christmas in the clouds
Bassett Maguire (1904–1991), a botanist who spent the majority of his career…
Typical: Double type
A herbarium's version of a double rainbow — a double type specimen.…
Typical: Erythronium helenae
Specimen StoriesWhat's in a name?
One of the common names for the genus Erythronium is the dogtooth…
Typical: Gymnopilus pallidus
Some characters are altered in the drying process used to create herbarium specimens.…
Typical: Hibiscadelphus stellatus
This type specimen is like a postcard from Hawaii reading "Wish you…
Weird & Wild Legumes
Cabinet of CuriositiesSpecimen Stories
Members of plant family Fabaceae (bean or legume family) produce a kind…
Western Road Trip
In the summer of 1952, recently retired Wabash College¹ botany professor Albert…
Western Road Trip: Crater Lake
It might be hard to believe the Bechtels could take their eyes…
Western Road Trip: Grant Grove
When visiting giant sequoia trees, you spend a lot of time looking…
Western Road Trip: Marble Canyon
The Grand Canyon might be the grandest of canyons carved by the…
What is a type specimen?
When a researcher names a new species (or other taxon) of algae,…
Women in Genera
What's in a name?Women in Science
For as long as we've been using binomial nomenclature to name species,…
Women's Scientific Empowerment
Natural history was immensely popular in the Victorian era, but women were…