Vascular plants

• Dr. Michael Windham, Curator of Vascular Plants
• Dr. Kathleen Pryer
• Dr. Donald E. Stone
• Dr. Robert L. Wilbur
• Dr. Layne Huiet
• Ms. Sherri Herndon, Curatorial Associate

Vascular Herbarium Phone: (919) 660-7317
Biology Department FAX: (919) 660-7293

Duke Herbarium houses nearly 400,000 specimens of vascular plants, including 821 types.
The collection is especially rich in accessions from the Southeastern United States, in particular for the Carolinas, and Mesoamerica. The vascular plant herbarium contains an important collection of over 22,000 sheets from La Selva in Costa Rica.

The herbarium is focused mainly on the Acanthaceae, Ericaceae, Fagaceae, Heliconiaceae, Juglandaceae, Passifloraceae, Poaceae and Cyperaceae families.

Kathleen Pryer's lab page * Digital Flora of La Selva * Organization for Tropical Studies

• Information for visitors
• Consultation and loan of specimens
• Destructive sampling policy
• Accessioning and exchange policy

History of the Duke Vascular Plant Herbarium

Hugo L. Blomquist, who came to Duke in 1921 (then Trinity College), initiated the Duke University herbarium. The first significant expansion of the Duke herbarium came in 1930 when Blomquist arranged to purchase the collection of P.O. Schallert of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The Schallert collection consisted of 16,000 specimens. About 12,000 of these were vascular plants and the rest were bryophytes, lichens, and algae. Schallert was a medical doctor with a master's degree in botany who had collected specimens from all over the world. "This addition to the Duke herbarium", the Alumni Register reported in June 1931, "brings the Duke collection of specimens of flowering plants to outstanding rank in the South."

Professor Henry J. Oosting joined the Department of Botany at Duke in 1932 as a plant ecologist and began a research program in vegetation analysis. Desperately needing a working herbarium for his vascular plant studies, he volunteered to serve as curator of the entire collection. Oosting had excellent training in systematics, first at Michigan State University under Darlington, and with Rosendahl and Butters at the University of Minnesota, where he studied ecology with Cooper. It was Oosting’s interests and energies that organized and guided the Duke herbarium into a working facility.

When Robert L. Wilbur joined the Botany Department in 1957, the vascular plants numbered approximately 130,000 specimens. The collection has nearly tripled in size since that time as a result of Wilbur's extensive personal collecting activities and some very high-profile students and colleagues working in the Neotropics.

Paul Manos was appointed to the Botany Department faculty in 1995. Manos and his students have added to the vascular collection through field work in both the New and Old World tropics.

Kathleen Pryer joined the department in 2001 with a strong commitment to the vascular plant herbarium, and particularly the pteridophyte collection.

COLLECTIONS | Vascular Plants | Algae | Bryophytes | Fungi | Lichens

2007 Duke University Herbarium, Durham, NC 27708 USA. We welcome your feedback and suggestions.
Duke University | Department of Biology