Chris Banyas
Life Editor
How many closed doors do you walk past every day on whatever course you take through the Idaho State University Campus? How many buildings do you hurry by on your way to whatever class or activity you’re running late for?
Have you ever wondered what was inside? What occurs just beyond the boundary, out of your sight?
One of these doors, located inside the Idaho Museum of Natural History, contains something that you might not expect to find there.
Inside lies the culmination of over eighty years of combined efforts from students, educators and volunteers at ISU.
At any given time, one or several of the eight student employees, as well as the many volunteers and managerial staff can be found strewn about the office at various stations, hunched over specimens, mounting, preserving, and eventually filing them.
These same processes have remained much the same over the years, each an individual act of scientific preservation and an exercise in protocol and practical study.
Like the many parts that make up a living thing, all of these efforts have brought to life a resource for learning and research: the Ray J. Davis Herbarium.
If you were to ask Merriam Webster to explain just what an herbarium is, the explanation might go something like this: a collection of dried plant specimens usually mounted and systematically arranged for reference.
But hearing the purpose of such an institution from the person responsible for it usually comes off as more insightful.
“It’s a library of plant specimens that are usable for identification and what I use it for mostly now is to find out where plant species occurred 50, 75, a hundred years ago, and then how has the landscape and the plant community changed over that period of time,” said Dr. Rick Williams, curator and associate professor in the department of biological sciences at ISU. “It’s really a snapshot of what the vegetation looked like at a given point in time, so there’s a lot of ecological information in there that we’re finding really useful as things change from disturbance or climate change or whatever it might be. So we know for sure this is what it was because here’s the specimen in your hand and you know what date and exactly where it was collected.”
The man for whom the herbarium is named, Ray J. Davis, was a professor of botany at ISU from 1930 to 1965.
Beginning in 1931, Davis began to amass a collection of plant specimens that would grow to over 35,000 by the time he retired. Davis drew upon this experience and knowledge to publish “Flora of Idaho” in 1952, a book that has since gone out of print.
Karl Holte took over for Davis in 1965 and continued in much the same fashion. The collection grew to over 60,000 specimens through the work of Holte and his students. Holte retired in 1997 but continues to serve as curator emeritus.
One of the main tools that herbarium curators have at their disposal, and perhaps the most effective method of adding specimens to a collection, is to trade with other institutions.
“A lot of it is to fill in gaps either for certain species that we don’t have or for geographic areas that we don’t have well-represented. So if someone’s done a big collection in a part of Idaho or the surrounding area that’s of interest to us, then we’ll trade some of our material for some of that material,” said Williams.
While other institutions have collections and herbariums in the region, the Ray J. Davis Herbarium is unique in several ways.
“We’re the second biggest collection in Idaho. U of I is bigger. Boise State and College of Idaho are a little smaller. BYU Idaho has a small collection. We’re sort of a small to medium-sized collection as it goes nationally,” said Williams. “BYU has a million specimens, we have 75,000. Utah State has about 100,000, U of I has about 250,000. We’re not huge in that regard, but we’re just strong regionally for representing the local flora and I think that’s what’s appreciated. That and we have so many of these historical specimens that go back to Davis’ era.”
Before being officially added to the collection, the plants go through several stages.
First, specimens are collected in the field and placed into a freezer for several days to ensure that no insects are left alive. After the freezing process, the plants are pressed and dried.
Now a two-dimensional representation, the specimens are arranged on non-acidic paper.
Finally, extensive notes are added to the specimen, which is identified if it hasn’t been already.
With so much information gathered and recorded for each individual plant, a sort of narrative can be constructed around each specimen, which has a unique story to tell.
“There’s a neat history behind every specimen. Who the person was, what expedition they were on when they collected it. We have lots of plant material that was collected by people who went on to be very famous botanists in their day,” said Williams. “One of the most famous botanists of the twentieth century, Arthur Cronquist, was an undergraduate under Davis at ISU and I think he’s from Rexburg. He wrote one of the major treatments of plants and was probably the most well-known plant taxonomist of his day and he got his start here in Pocatello. We have the specimens he collected when he took classes here in his first years of collecting.”
Specimens from all over the world can be found within the collection, including Japan, Russia, Mexico, Sweden and Norway. Certain specimens are very old as well, some dating back to the mid-1800s.
One of the most interesting collections present in the herbarium came from a former president of the United States.
“I think the most interesting specimens we have right now historically, and I want to make a display of these in the museum, were collected by president Chester A. Arthur. Shortly after the Civil War, he was the first president to actually visit Yellowstone. So he rode the train to Green River, Wyoming, and they went by horseback through Yellowstone to Gardner, Montana, and then took the train back to Washington,” said Williams. “Of course there was an army escort and it was this big expedition. They collected a bunch of plants on that expedition, a few of which we have that were probably originally trades from Yellowstone Park because Ray Davis worked as a seasonal ranger some summers when he was collecting.”
The Ray J. Davis Herbarium is also a part of the Consortium of Pacific Northwest Herbaria, based out of the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Seattle. The consortium collects information and makes it available through an online database.
“There’s about 50 herbaria that are a part of it and we’re all contributing data, so we have 70,000 data records but when you put all of our data together, we have more than two million records in the database now that can be searched and mapped,” said Williams.
Whatever the interests a person might have, there are likely volunteer opportunities available inside the herbarium.
“We always have volunteer opportunities to work in the herbarium. I have people that come in and do databasing and help prepare specimens and usually end up going on some of these collecting trips in the summer. That’s sort of the payoff for sitting in the herbarium all winter,” said Williams. “Then you get to go out when plants are actually blooming and see things in the wild. I also am in charge of all the other biological collections, so the mammals, the birds, the fish, the amphibians and reptiles, all that kind of stuff, so through the museum and some of the faculty in biology, there are opportunities to work in some of those collections. We’re always putting on exhibits in the gallery over here and a couple of students are helping with graphic design and the art for the exhibits.”
Williams’ personal area of expertise is tied closely to his work at the herbarium, and is also related to some of his favorite plants.
“I do most of my research up in the alpine region, mostly in Colorado, but a little bit in Idaho, so I really like those very high elevation plants from high up on mountain ridges and mountain tops,” said Williams. “Some projects I’m doing are to describe what plants occur on different mountain tops, because they’re kind of like islands, they’re somewhat isolated from one another and you can compare the species that are on different mountain tops. Also, that’s an area that is really going to take a hit from global warming, so describing what’s there now so that as things change over the next 1500 years is going to be really important.”
All of this may sound safe and predictable, but while out in the field, anything can happen.
“We were almost run over by a moose on a field trip one time. A whole bunch of students just here in Pocatello, collecting plants, and a moose with a calf, somebody came by and their dog started chasing the moose and the moose got mad and people scattered to the four winds,” said Williams.
For more information regarding volunteering, or the newly offered tours with the researchers and curators who work in the museum, visit imnh.isu.edu or contact Williams directly at ude.usinull@2ahclliw.
