Imagine the smell of decades-old Valerian as you look at plants from the 1800s; while these specimens seem like something that can only be read about in history books, they are just a few examples of real samples still contained today at Colorado State University’s Charles Maurer Herbarium Collection.
Head Curator Jennifer Ackerfield oversees the collection and ensures preservation and proper presentation of specimens. Once a graduate student at CSU, she now splits her responsibilities as curator with her other role as an assistant professor. When in the herbarium, she works with a collection of over 100,000 specimens, including some of the oldest in the state, dating back as far as 1861.
Unlike a greenhouse, the herbarium serves as a record of plant specimens for scientific data. The plants are no longer living but are stored and labelled to show where the specimen came from, when it was collected and who collected it. This information allows scientists to determine historic species ranges and answer a multitude of research questions…