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Herbarium Highlights
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Introduction
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The Connell Memorial herbarium is the largest collection of vascular plant specimens from the New Brunswick flora. There are approximately 55,000 vascular plant specimens from New Brunswick, 9,000 non-New Brunswick vascular plants, and about 1,000 algae, mainly seaweeds.
The herbarium is a critical resource for people interested in New Brunswick's flora. Taxonomists, evolutionary and conservation biologists, botanical and environmental consultants and ecologists rely upon the herbarium for identification of plants and documentation of their variation, distribution, ecology and interactions with insects & diseases. It is essential for scientific research that voucher specimens are safely and permanently stored in herbaria and be accessible for loans to researchers from around the globe.
Mission Statement
The mission of the Connell Memorial Herbarium is to house correctly identified, representative, scientific specimens, primarily of the vascular plant flora of New Brunswick and algae from around the world. Toward this mission the specimens must be maintained in good condition, arranged in an orderly fashion, and be accessible to the public. The herbarium is a research and teaching facility and serves as the official repository for specimens of endangered and threatened New Brunswick plants.
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History
This section is taken from the booklet "The Connell Memorial Herbarium" by C. Mary Young, a bicentential project of the University of New Brunswick published in 1985. Updates by Bev Benedict
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The Founder of the Herbarium
Dr. James Robb (1815 - 1861)
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The head waters of the Grand River are shallow, narrow, winding like a serpent or 50,000 serpents, infested by mosquitoes, blackflies, and sand flies so numerous that the moon could hardly peer through them, so hungry that they light by thousands on every exposed point of your body leaving it all streaked with blood .... The alders grow on each side and meet in the middle so that we have to push ... through the heart of them, and a thousand burnt stumps had fallen across besides and ... we had to jump into the water and push or carry our canoe across or cut them with our axe...or fairly take the canoe on shore and carry it on the head till the river or rather ditch became again navigable.1
Thus Dr. James Robb described the vagaries of plant collecting in New Brunswick in 1838. Specimens that he collected are preserved in the Connell Memorial Herbarium of the University of New Brunswick.2
Dr. Robb, the first Lecturer in Chemistry and Natural History at King's College (which became the University of New Brunswick in 1859), had arrived from Scotland a year earlier. He had studied classics and medicine in the liberal environment of the Scottish schools and universities and had travelled abroad for further studies in science.
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In the great European educational centres of the time, botany was developing as a subject in its own right and was no longer a mere adjunct to the medical schools. Voyages of discovery and overseas expansion had brought a wealth of botanical specimens into Europe. The study of these collections gave an impetus to the development of scientific methods of observing plants and led to a flowering of taxonomic botany. While in Paris, Dr. Robb became familiar with the "natural" systems of plant classification such as those devised by the de Jussieu family at the Jardin des Plantes and by the De Candolles in Switzerland. Moreover, he attended lectures by such famous biologists as Isidore St. Hilaire and Adrien de Jussieu of the faculty of science at the Sorbonne and visited many of the great European herbaria.3
Robb was also well aware of the value of a collection of indigenous plants. Indeed, shortly after his arrival in Fredericton, he wrote that he was busy lecturing on botany but was "a good deal cramped for want of plants."4 He immediately set about organizing a "cabinet" of New Brunswick specimens. This was in keeping with one of the declared aims of King's College, namely to familiarize students with the native plants and their uses.5
Not only did Robb collect plants in the immediate neighbourhood of Fredericton but, in 1838, he traveled many miles by canoe through the New Brunswick wilderness following the St. John, Tobique, Grande and Restigouche river systems, observing the geology and collecting plants. The following year, while en route to Quebec, he investigated the headwaters of the St. John River.
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Dr. Robb's plant collection contained a number of specimens from the European continent and elsewhere. While in France in 1835, he had bought approximately eight hundred specimens from the estate of an archivist of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris and had acquired a further five hundred in Switzerland and Italy. He brought a few of these to New Brunswick with him. This collection was enriched by specimens gathered by the intrepid collectors Philip Barker Webb and a M [r]. Thomson, and by a few obtained from the eminent British botanists John Balfour and Joseph Hooker.6 This herbarium material was arranged in a cabinet according to the Linnean system of plant classification based on the sexual characters of flowers.7 The plants, together with geological specimens, formed the nucleus of a small museum which Robb started at King's College.
Dr. Robb's successor, Loring Woart Bailey who arrived at the University of New Brunswick in 1861, was the son of a distinguished American scientist, Jacob Whitman Bailey. Loring Bailey was acquainted with the celebrated botanist Asa Gray, the geologist Louis Agassiz, and other leaders of the American scientific community.8 He was trained in chemistry at Harvard and at Brown University. Bailey was expected, as Dr. Robb had been, to teach chemistry, physics, geology, and the other natural sciences. He chose to make geology a special sphere of interest and investigation, and during the summer vacations often worked for the Canadian Geological Survey.9
He also maintained an interest in botany. While on a canoe trip in 1863 through the Tobique- Nepisiguit region, he noted that the flora was distinctive, with many species of herbaceous flowering plants not known to occur in other parts of the province.10 On that expedition he collected a number of specimens that are in the herbarium today.
Dr. Bailey was very much concerned with developing the museum. During his tenure it doubled in size, finally occupying four rooms.11 In addition to specimens he collected personally, he acquired others from friends in the United States. Among the plants are several that were contributed by his brother, William Whitman Bailey, collected between 1869 and 1875 and in the early 1890s from parts of Illinois, Ohio, Rhode Island and New York. William Bailey, a professor of botany at Brown University, lectured at the University of New Brunswick for a few months in the late 1860s during his brother's temporary absence.12
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Another contributor to the herbarium from 1860 to the early 1890s, the Rev. James Fowler, merits special mention. He lived for a time at Bass River, fifteen miles south-west of Richibucto, and later at Saint John and Fredericton. He collected extensively in all three areas and while at Fredericton travelled widely examining the flora of the St. John River valley.13 Eventually he became a professor of botany at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and took a collection of New Brunswick plants to that university with him. There are many specimens in the Connell Memorial Herbarium collected by the Rev. James Fowler.
Loring Bailey and the Rev. James Fowler carried on a correspondence in which they discussed problems of identification and exchanged information on where particular species could be found. They were particularly interested in examining the distribution of New Brunswick species in relation to the prevailing ideas on plant distribution on the North American continent.14 In a letter of December 8, 1869, for instance, Fowler noted certain "southern" and "continental" species occurred at Richibucto and Miramichi. He was referring to categories established by Asa Gray at Harvard and showed that the distribution pattern suggested by Dr. Gray was incomplete and should be extended farther northwards.15
The number of herbarium sheets in the museum grew to seven hundred by 1869 and to one thousand by 1897.16 Apart from the plant collections, the museum contained rocks, minerals, fossils, stuffed animals, "curiosities," "monstrosities," and a collection of microscope slides. In an encaenial address in 1869, Dr. Bailey pleaded for a building to house a permanent museum of geology and natural history and complained that the museum remained "in an overcrowded condition" with "much valuable material... stowed away in a practically useless form."17 Both Dr. Bailey and the president of the university, Dr. Brydone Jack, approached the provincial legislature several times for aid for the building of a museum, but to no avail.18
Dr. Bailey made an unfavourable comparison between attitudes in New Brunswick and those at Harvard University, then in the forefront of the great expansion in the sciences in North America. The spirit of discovery and the zest for knowledge led the Americans to organize many expeditions to the West. Botanical and geological specimens from these explorations swelled the museum collections of universities in the eastern states. At Harvard, in contrast to New Brunswick, there were five museums in the Department of Natural Science and, by 1869, the sum of one and a half million dollars had been devoted to their development.19
In 1907, Philip Cox, the first science student at the University of New Brunswick to earn a Ph.D. and a former pupil of Dr. Bailey, succeeded him in the areas of geology and natural history.20 As a teacher in Newcastle, New Brunswick, Dr. Cox had decried the emphasis placed on classical education to the detriment of the natural sciences.21 He was an enthusiastic member of the Miramichi Natural History Association, was an avid collector of plants of the Miramichi region for the local museum there and, in 1905, had published a preliminary catalogue of plants represented in the Association's herbarium.22
While at the University of New Brunswick, however, Dr. Cox's chief interest was vertebrate zoology, particularly fishes.23 There are only about fifty-four plants in the Connell Memorial Herbarium collected by Cox; these, collected in 1907 and 1908, are from the Bay du Vin area of Northumberland County and Millville, York County.
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During the latter half of the twenty-three years that Dr. Cox taught at the University of New Brunswick, much of the museum material appears to have been placed in storage. The part of the museum available to students occupied only one room. Representatives of the Museum Association who visited the university in 1931 reported that the museum was under the curatorship of Dr. Cox's successor, Dr. C.W. Argue. At that time the museum, which included the plant collection, occupied two large rooms in the Old Arts Building but was only opened on application to the janitor.24
Perhaps due to sheer lack of space, or perhaps due to the emphasis being placed on the new ideas of plant physiology and experimentation which permeated the botanical world from the turn of the twentieth century, and from a corresponding decline in the interest in systematics which coincided with the new approach, the herbarium material at the University of New Brunswick remained hidden for many years in the recesses of the Old Arts Building. When Dr. A.R.A. Taylor arrived at the university in 1946, there was no museum.25
Dr. Taylor resurrected the herbarium material from the vaults of the Old Arts Building where the sheets had lain on the floor gathering dust and mildew.26 He was anxious to find material for teaching purposes suitable for classes in taxonomy and ecology. During the winter of 1946-47, Mrs. Taylor worked on a voluntary basis, rescuing as much material as possible from the old collection and remounting specimens.27 Dr. Taylor added plants from Ontario to the collection. New Brunswick plants were collected by Dr. E.O. Hagmeier who, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, had a cabinet of specimens suitable for ecology classes. He referred to this as his Botanische Wintergarten.28
The 1960s were marked by a surge of public interest in ecology. This was conducive both to the study of plants in the field and to a recognition that expanded plant collections could contribute to general knowledge. They could, for example, help to determine what species were in danger of dying out and could also contribute to the recognition of the nature of the interrelationship between plants.
The present state of the herbarium at the University of New Brunswick is in large part due to the vision of Patricia Roberts-Pichette. Like the nineteenth century initiators of the collection, she had a varied background, having received training in New Zealand and the United States before coming to Canada. In the 1960s, Dr. Roberts-Pichette collected extensively in all parts of the province, so that the herbarium became truly representative of the New Brunswick flora. She was aided by a number of students, notably B. Pugh, D.E. Drury and N. Bateman. At the end of this period of activity the number of specimens in the herbarium was approximately twenty-one thousand.
Dr. Roberts-Pichette published a check-list of the vascular plants of the Fredericton area in 1966 and a short article recording the occurrence of three Arctic species in the gypsum cliff area of Albert County.29 These species had not previously been found so far south on the Canadian mainland.
A further boost to the size of the herbarium came in 1972 with the significant gift of the herbarium of Dr. Katherine M. Connell of Woodstock. Dr. Connell, a medical practitioner, made a collection of approximately one thousand plants from Carleton County as a special project for Canada's Centennial Year in 1967.30 These sheets of beautifully mounted plants are now integrated into the university herbarium. On October 13, 1976 The Herbarium of the University of New Brunswick was renamed The Connell Memorial Herbarium in honour of Dr. Connell BA, MA, Ph.D. 1899-1973 mother, educator and botanist.
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Harold Royall Hinds
Curator of Herbarium (1979 - 2001)
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From 1980 to 2001 the herbarium was in the able and enthusiastic care of Harold R. Hinds, who has added considerably to our knowledge of the native flora. He focused on conservation biology, plant identification and ecology. He found many species not previously recorded for this province and served key roles in the recognition and protection of the province's rare and endangered plants. Under Hal's tenure the Connell Memorial Herbarium grew by over 25000 specimens (almost half of which he collected himself) and became the major depository for the rare and endangered plant specimens of N.B. Out of his extensive field and herbarium work emerged the "Flora of New Brunswick". First published in 1986, the Flora of New Brunswick has become the standard work for N.B. botanists. Hal published a much revised 2nd edition in 2000, shortly before his death. Hal has also published The Flora of Grand Manan31 and check-lists of the vascular plants of Carleton County and of woody and rare plants of New Brunswick.32
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In recent years there have also been contributions of plant material from other interested people. In the herbarium are specimens from the Acadia Forest Experimental Station collected by Gilbert C. Cunningham of the Canadian Forestry Service, a collection of Arctic plants from Ross Wein of the University of New Brunswick, an extensive collection from the Kouchibouguac National Park collected by Derek Munro of the Canada Department of Agriculture, plants from the Wolf Islands in the Bay of Fundy collected by Albion R. Hodgdon and Radcliffe B. Pike of the University of New Hampshire, plants from the west coast of Newfoundland collected by Uno Paim of the University of New Brunswick and a number of specimens from the botanically interesting area of Plaster Rock collected by Erwin Landauer. Sean Blaney from the Atlantic Canada Conservation Data Centre and Gart Bishop are currently contributing many interesting specimens from the Atlantic region.
Duplicate specimens received from the herbaria of the universities of Laval, Alberta, Michigan and Louisiana are from the widely separated areas of West Greenland, Alaska, Quebec, the Midwest and Louisiana. Duplicate specimens from all parts of New Brunswick collected by J.A. Forsythe and David C. Christie for the National Museums are also incorporated into the collection.
Not only has our knowledge of the number of species present in New Brunswick been increased by these collections, but also since, in many cases, several examples of any one species are now represented in the collection, we have a greater insight into the distribution of species and the variability within species. This is a point which would have been appreciated by the founder of the herbarium James Robb who, in the early 1830s, was advised of the desirability of obtaining from fifty to one hundred specimens of each species.33
Today, the Connell Memorial Herbarium, housing over fifty-five thousand sheets of plants, serves not only as an adjunct to the teaching of systematic botany and as an exchange centre for duplicate material from other herbaria, but also as a valuable research tool. Since the data taken with each specimen includes the precise location of the plant, the date, notes on the abundance, type of habitat and, wherever possible, the associated species, the herbarium material is useful in ecological and biogeographical studies.34 It is now possible to determine rare and endangered species.
In his encaenia address of 1872, Loring Woart Bailey complained that too often natural history museums were "regarded entirely apart from their educational usefulness," that they were frequently looked upon as "a mere collection of curiosities, a sort of omnium gatherum or lifeless menagerie, designed ... solely for the purpose of amusement." The Connell Memorial Herbarium, which has grown from the original, small collection of plant specimens which formed a part of the university museum of the nineteenth century, is today a viable, useful research tool, a valuable resource and worthy addition to the University of New Brunswick. Moreover, it has a unique place amoung Canadian herbaria in that it is the oldest institutional collection of plant material in the country.35
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Facilities & Guidelines for use
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The entire facility is housed in a specially air conditioned area of the Biology Department, UNB (Bailey Hall).
There is currently a work room and an herbarium storage room with plans for another storage room dedicated to algae.
The facilities includes areas for specimen preparation with rolling shelves for drying glued specimens, a professional dryer, a computer for accessioning and data basing collections, and detailed maps and gazetteer of N.B..
The storage rooms have standard herbarium steel cabinets. There is a large library of relevant and current literature and a table working space with herbarium stereoscopic and compound microscopes.
Specimens are divided into 4 groupings within the herbarium. The perimeter cabinets house 3 of the groups: dicots, ferns & fern allies (i.e. spore plants) & gymnosperms. Monocots are contained in the cabinets in the centre of the room. Within each grouping, specimens are organized alphabetically by family, genus and species. We also have an algal collection (which is housed separately) and a small collection of fungi.
Specimens from NB are in separate folders (usually labeled in green or with a green dot) and come before those collected outside the province (usually labeled in red or with a red dot). Older specimens are kept in paper folders within the species folder for extra protection. Often, subspecies and varieties are also separated by paper folders within the species folder. Other than this, specimens are not in any particular order within the folders.
Guidelines for Herbarium Use
- Permission to use the herbarium should be obtained from the curator - Professor Gary Saunders, or the collections manager - Bev Benedict.
- To avoid damaging specimens, carry sheets flat, supporting them with a cardboard corrugate when outside the folder. Do not bend sheets or folders and take care to pull folders straight out when removing them from a shelf, particularly the top shelves (there is a step stool available).
- When going through specimens, place them carefully on top of one another. Do not turn them over like a book.
- Keep food and drink away from the specimens.
- If unsure where to shelve a specimen, leave it out for herbarium staff to shelve.
- Keep cabinet doors tightly closed when not in use (sometimes a good push with your foot on the bottom is necessary).
- Remove specimens which are losing their labels or are coming unattached and leave them in the mounting area. Please let herbarium staff know if you come across any signs of insect infestation.
- Place newly annotated specimens in the labeled cabinet across from the drying rack above the glue in the mounting area.
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Plant Collecting
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Ethics
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As the impact of humans on the environment increases, it becomes paramount that as nature enthusiasts we strive to minimize our individual impact on the natural world. Here are a few guidelines for observing and collecting plant specimens
- Aim to leave the area in the same shape that you found it.
- Plants that you know or suspect are rare should not be collected. Take a picture (or collect just a portion of the plant), flag the site, take detailed location data and notify the local Conservation Data Centre. Photographs can also be used as herbarium specimens.
- Mass collecting should be avoided.
- Obtain permission before collecting from parks or private land.
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How to make a plant press
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Parts of a drying press:
- belt, rope or bungy cord
- press frame
- ventilator (corrugate or cardboard)
- blotter or foam
- newspaper (contains 1 specimen and is labeled with collection #)
- blotter or foam
- ventilator
- etc.
- etc.
- press frame
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A field press has these same components except, that in the interest of keeping gear at a minimum, there are up to 10 sheets of newspaper, each containing a separate specimen, between the blotters. Alternatively, while in the field, plants can be labeled with the collection # and put into heavy duty plastic bags to await pressing.
Ropes, belts, bungies or even heavy books can be used to press the specimens. Belts etc. should be pulled as tight as possible and often need to be retightened after the initial day of drying as the specimens lose moisture.
Frames are usually made of wood. Often they are latticed in the interest of minimizing weight and encouraging drying. Frames are typically 30 x 46 cm (12 x 18 in), as are the corrugates.
Ventilators are typically corrugated cardboard, although metal corrugates are also available. The corrugations should run parallel to the short end of the frame to allow for the greatest air flow.
Blotters are not always necessary but are useful if specimens are succulent or if the climate is humid and a plant dryer is not close at hand. Foam is used for specimens with thick parts to distribute the pressure evenly over the entire specimen and to ensure that thinner parts get pressed as well.
Pressing
Newspapers should be cut to the same size as standard herbarium mounting paper, 29 x 41.5 cm (11.5 x 16.5 in) or smaller. Specimens too large for the paper can be folded (in a v or w). A piece of pressboard with a slit in it can be useful for keeping the bent material in place. Also, larger specimens can be divided between 2 or more sheets. In the case of very large specimens, parts such as the midstem can be omitted if they are not needed for identification. For trees and shrubs, collections should consist of flowers, fruit (if possible), terminal and lateral buds, and enough material for the branching pattern to be evident.
Remove any soil from the roots of herbaceous specimens. Thick fruits, stems, corms, bulbs etc. can be cut in half to both encourage drying and show features. Large fruit like pine cones can be dried whole and stored separately from the mounted specimen. It is very important to ensure that at least one leaf is turned over so that both the abaxial and adaxial surfaces of the leaves can be examined on the mounted specimen. It is also advisable to spread out some flowers to show the flower parts. Very small, loose or extra parts should be enclosed in a fragment folder/seed pcket.
Drying
It is important that specimens dry relatively quickly to prevent them from molding. A plant drier is the best way to dry specimens. We have a commercial one at UNB but in the field one can be made relying on the convection of hot air from light bulbs placed under the presses. Take precautions to prevent fire. Presses should be arranged so that air is moving through the long side where the ventilator openings are rather than the short side. Presses can also be put on the luggage racks of cars, in the back window, just above the pavement on a hot, dry day or near a radiator. Many specimens will be dry in 24-48 hours although some may take up to 6 days. A specimen is dry when it is no longer limp.
Specimens requiring special treatment:
Aquatic plants, which are too delicate to arrange properly, can be floated directly onto a herbarium sheet or a sheet of acid free paper and arranged while they are supported by the water. If they are mucilaginous they will stick to the sheet on their own and a piece of j-cloth or wax paper should be placed over top to prevent them from sticking to the newspaper.
Succulents may have to be sliced open and even sprinkled with salt or the inner flesh removed to encourage quick drying. If this is not done some succulents may remain alive inside the drier and slowly shrivel away to practically nothing. Blotters and newspapers should also be changed frequently while drying succulents. If newspapers are to be changed, it is best to attach to the specimen a label with the plant collection number rather than writing it on the newspaper. These, of course, should be written in pencil.
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Poison Ivy
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In many areas of NB. poison ivy is a fact of life, so here are a few pointers on identification and manaement. Poison ivy is part of the Anacardiaceae - Cashew family. Two species occur in our province Toxicodendron rydbergii (which has toothed leaflets and does not climb and thus is without aerial roots) & T. radicans (with leaflets more or less entire and often with aerial rootlets for climbing). Poison ivy is found throughout NB.
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