The UW Oshkosh Herbarium (OSH)

Dr. Thomas Lammers
Curator of the Herbarium

Dr. Neil Harriman
Curator Emeritus

General Information

An herbarium (pl. herbaria) is a collection of pressed and dried plant specimens, appropriately labeled as to identity and geographic origin, and arranged in a systematic fashion.  An herbarium is a requisite facility for any university, botanical garden, or natural history museum with a commitment to teaching and research in organismal, ecological, and evolutionary biology.

The UW Oshkosh Herbarium was founded in 1964 when Dr. Neil A. Harriman began collecting and preparing specimens of vascular plants as part of his teaching and research program.  Though he retired to emeritus status in 1998, Dr. Harriman continues to participate on a daily basis in the growth and curation of the collection he founded.  In September 1999,  Dr. Thomas G. Lammers assumed responsibility for the collection.  In Index Herbariorum  (http://www.nybg.org/bsci/ih/ih.html) our official international acronym is OSH.

The herbarium is located in the basement of the Halsey Science Center, in Room 9.  The facilities were thoroughly renovated during Summer and Fall 2000 and occupy approximately 3700 square feet.  Visitors are welcome during normal weekday business hours.  Our phone number is (920) 424-1002 and our e-mail address is lammers@uwosh.edu.  

Holdings

However, well over half our specimens originate from areas outside the state.  Every continent is represented, as are most major biomes and nearly every family of vascular plants.  Many of the extra-Wisconsin specimens have been obtained by trading duplicate specimens with other collectors and herbaria.  Over the years, we have received specimens as gifts or exchanges from such diverse institutions as the Smithsonian Institution in Washington; the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis; the Bishop Museum in Honolulu; Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan; the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa; the University of Ulm in Germany; and the University of Vienna in Austria.

 Among our most significant holdings is our collection of type specimens.  Types are the specimens upon which scientific names are based.  When a new species is discovered, described, and named, a type specimen must be designated.  It serves as a standard of reference for the correct application of that name, much as the meter stick or kilogram weight at the Bureau of Standards serve as standards of reference for units of measure.  The UW Oshkosh Herbarium includes over 70 type specimens.  Among these are a number of species described by the curators (e.g., Aldama mesoamericana N. A. Harriman and Centropogon exsertus Lammers), as well as several named by other botanists in Dr. Harriman’s honor: Phyllanthus harrimanii G. L. Webster, Flyriella harrimanii H. Rob., and Lundellianthus harrimanii Strother. 

The herbarium is growing at the rate of 2000-3000 specimens per year.  On 15 March 2001, we accessioned our 100,000^th specimen into the collection: the type specimen of a new species from Peru, Centropogon vitifolius Lammers.   At this level, UW Oshkosh possesses the fourth largest herbarium in the state of Wisconsin.  Only UW Madison (WIS - 900,000 specimens), the Milwaukee Public Museum (MIL - 265,000), and UW Stevens Point (UWSP - 165,000) are larger.  However, the geographic coverage of MIL and UWSP are much narrower, with few specimens from outside the midwestern United States.  As such, it is fair to say that the UW Oshkosh Herbarium is the second largest comprehensive herbarium in Wisconsin.  In October 2001, the UW Oshkosh Herbarium grew further when it acquired the herbarium of Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin.  These specimens date to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and greatly expand the time period as well as the geographic coverage of our holdings. Three years later, the herbarium was honored to receive, as a gift, the personal herbarium of UWO alumna Katherine D. Rill, a total of 8600 specimens, collected throughout North America over the last 50 years. This invaluable collection contains vouchers for a number of surveys of pristine natural areas in Wisconsin, as well as many important county and state records.

A valuable adjunct to the herbarium is Dr. Harriman’s botanical library. Virtually every current flora and botanical monograph from every part of the world can be found on its shelves, as well as numerous historically important works.  Also included are subscriptions to about 20 scientific journals pertinent to botanical systematics. 

Usage

The specimens conserved in the UW Oshkosh Herbarium are useful in a variety of ways in meeting the university’s teaching, research, and service mission.  They provide students with concrete illustrations of plants discussed in class, an opportunity to familiarize themselves with actual examples of  botanical diversity.  Instructors are able to demonstrate plants from around the globe, irrespective of season or their availability in cultivation.  The herbarium is absolutely essential for teaching Plant Taxonomy (Biol 304/504), where the students use specimens to learn the features of major plant families discussed in lecture and to confirm their identifications of unknown plants.  Herbarium specimens are also used  as demonstrations and examples in Biology of Plants and Microbes (Biol 231) and Plant Anatomy (Biol 337/537).

In research, herbarium specimens represent the fundamental data upon which all studies of classification and relationships are conducted, and serve as the ultimate basis for every scholarly book and monograph on plants.  Detailed morphological descriptions are routinely based on measurements from dried material.  Seeds and pollen grains removed from herbarium sheets may be studied under the scanning electron microscope (SEM). Chemical compounds, including DNA, can be extracted from herbarium specimens for use by biochemists and molecular biologists.  Labels of specimens contain  information regarding geographic distribution, ecological relationships, and flowering time, which are of great value in efforts to manage and conserve biodiversity. The introduction and historical spread of invasive weeds can be inferred from the study of herbarium collections, as can the extirpation of rare and endangered plants.  Herbarium specimens also serve as vouchers for the correct identity of plants used in almost any sort of scientific study, including determinations of chromosome numbers, phytochemical surveys, hybridization studies, physiology experiments, etc.

In addition to the students and faculty of UW Oshkosh, our herbarium is an important resource for many other users in the state.  Conservation organizations such as the Wisconsin Heritage Program, The Nature Conservancy, and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources routinely turn to the UW Oshkosh Herbarium for data on the distribution and occurrence of rare and endangered plants.  Homeowners, amateur naturalists, teachers, and nurserymen routinely bring plants to the herbarium, requesting expert identification.   Our service does not end at the state line, however.  Researchers at  institutions throughout the world borrow our specimens for inclusion in their own monographic research or send us specimens for identification.  Recently, we provided tissue samples of several rare mistletoe species to a molecular biologist in Poland for extraction of DNA.  In short, an herbarium is a vast storehouse of raw knowledge about plants, which biologists can tap in a variety of ways.

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Last updated:   1 October 2001