CHAPEL HILL, NC (WWAY) — UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University plan to combine their herbarium collections under the management of the North Carolina Botanical Garden, creating what the universities say will be the third-largest university herbarium in the United States.
The combined collection will include about 1.7 million preserved plant specimens. According to the universities, it will rank behind only Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley, and will be the largest university herbarium in the Southeast.
Herbaria are scientific collections of preserved plant specimens, typically dried, pressed and labeled for long-term study. Researchers use them to examine plant diversity, changes in species distribution, invasive species, land use and long-term climate trends…