{"id":1611,"date":"2014-06-12T15:19:58","date_gmt":"2014-06-12T19:19:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nybg.org\/science-talk\/?p=1611"},"modified":"2014-06-12T16:29:19","modified_gmt":"2014-06-12T20:29:19","slug":"inside-the-steere-herbarium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2014\/06\/inside-the-steere-herbarium\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the Steere Herbarium"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stevenson Swanson<\/a> is The New York Botanical Garden\u2019s<\/a> Science Media Manager.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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\"The<\/a>
The William & Lynda Steere Herbarium<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of the most important research facilities at The New York Botanical Garden is the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium<\/a>, but unless you\u2019re a plant scientist or seriously interested in botany, chances are you\u2019re unfamiliar with what a herbarium is and why it\u2019s crucial to the task of understanding and conserving Earth\u2019s plant life.<\/p>\n

Simply put, a herbarium is a library of plants\u20147.3 million preserved plant specimens, in the case of the Steere Herbarium. That makes it the largest herbarium in the Western Hemisphere and one of the four largest in the world.<\/p>\n

But what can researchers learn from all those specimens? How do they use the knowledge stored there? How was the Steere Herbarium founded, and does it contain just the things that average people think of as plants\u2014trees, flowers and shrubs? What about seaweed, moss, lichens and mushrooms?
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\nThose questions and many others are answered in this short video, produced by JSTOR<\/a>, the digital library of academic journals and other research materials. It\u2019s part of a series explaining the Global Plants Initiative, a project JSTOR is coordinating to assemble a digital, Web-accessible collection of the most important plant specimens at more than 300 herbaria, museums and universities worldwide. The Botanical Garden is a major partner in the project.<\/p>\n