UC herbarium ready for its close-up
UC’s extensive plant collection has a new campus home thanks to NSF grant
The University of Cincinnati’s extensive catalog of plant specimens from around the world has a new home after vacating Crosley Tower.
The herbarium, named after the renowned botanist Margaret Fulford, holds a collection of more than 125,000 specimens of flowering plants, ferns, moss, lichens and liverworts from all seven continents. The new home was made possible in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. The collection is maintained in rows of climate-controlled state-of-the-art cabinets that slide on tracks to maximize storage capacity.
“They provide 30% more storage space,” Curator Eric Tepe said.
Tepe is an associate professor of biological sciences in UC’s College of Arts and Sciences. He has personally added to the collection over the years through his fieldwork. He has discovered several plants new to science, particularly among peppers he studies.
“I got hooked on relatives of black pepper as an undergraduate,” he said. “It’s an ancient lineage that’s different from everything else. I got seduced by them at an early age and later realized what an enormous and complicated group they are. But by then it was too late.”
UC Associate Professor Eric Tepe examines a plant specimen in a folder from the newly relocated Margaret H. Fulford Herbarium in Rieveschl Hall. Photo/Michael Miller
The herbarium’s former home on the 16th floor of Crosley Tower was subject to periodic leaks and even floods. The cabinets were old and rusting. But the renovations of Old Chemistry opened space in Rieveschl Hall for the new herbarium, thanks in part to support from UC's Office of Planning + Design + Construction.
UC botanist Margaret H. Fulford founded the collection in the 1920s. She was a biology graduate who returned to UC to teach botany after earning a doctorate from Yale University. The herbarium also contains Fulford’s personal library, which contains hundreds of books and thousands of articles.
Discovery is often a study in frustration.
Eric Tepe, Curator of UC's Margaret H. Fulford Herbarium
Fulford was a globally recognized expert in liverworts, Tepe said. These are primitive plants that grow low to the ground. Instead of roots, they absorb nutrients and water through diffusion. Dutch botanist Stephan Gradstein, who worked as a UC graduate research assistant, named a genus of liverworts after Fulford in 1992.
“She was a recognized world authority, so she was sent liverwort specimens from all over,” Tepe said. “So we have a remarkable collection of those often overlooked plants.”
UC moved its herbarium to Rieveschl Hall as the university prepares to demolish its former home at Crosley Tower. Botanists from around the world use its collection both in physical and digital form to study research questions around the world. Photo/Michael Miller
The collection even has liverworts from King George Island in Antarctica. And there are lichens from Svalbard in the Arctic Circle.
UC has the third-largest plant collection in Ohio behind herbaria at Miami University and Ohio State University. They are among the more than 700 plant collections kept in North America.
UC’s collection also includes 8,000 specimens of fungi, 8,000 specimens of lichen, 1,500 species of algae and 1,500 wood samples.
“The specimens typically are selected to be representative of the species,” Tepe said. “But sometimes they're selected because they're oddballs.”
They are preserved on acid-free paper with descriptions noting the date and location of collection, the scientist who collected it and any relevant observations.
UC student Olivia Leek serves as the collections manager for the Margaret H. Fulford Herbarium. She holds up one of the many pine cones in the collection. Photo/Michael Miller
Biology students and scientists around the world use the collection for botanical research. The herbarium gets regular requests to ship specimens on loan to universities around the world. And in turn, UC researchers do likewise. Tepe opened folder containing a specimen of wild potato from Bolivia on loan from an herbarium in the Netherlands.
With support from the National Science Foundation, UC has been digitizing its collection so researchers can easily study and compare specimens on demand.
“Our requests for specimens have really gone up since we started digitizing our collection,” Tepe said.
UC is digitizing its collection of specimens like this pepper plant for use by researchers around the world. Photo/Provided
The collections can help researchers track processes like the succession of forests or emerging invasive species and human impacts.
Collections Manager Olivia Leek, who is studying biology at UC, worked to organize the collection in its new home. She is using herbaria to study plant collection trends in Northern Appalachia for her thesis.
“I have a good idea of what we have in the collection. That’s useful when people come in to ask what we have,” she said.
Tepe does a lot of his botanical research in South America, particularly in Ecuador. The rainforest has a wealth of plants and animals that have not been scientifically classified. But oil has been discovered here so there is more urgency to identify what’s there, Tepe said.
“The project I’m working on now is based in the Ecuadorian Amazon in an hour car ride and an eight-hour boat ride from the nearest town,” he said. “That area of Ecuador is wildly under-collected.”
Animals, too, he said. He has taken part in moth surveys which involve setting up white sheets vertically at night in front of bright lights in the rainforest.
“We’d get 20, 30 or 40 species per night and 50% would be new to science,” he said. “And then you pack up and go 100 meters lower elevation and you’d see almost none of the same insects.”
Tepe said finding something new is always exciting.
“You have the idea that it happens when you’re out in the jungle, and you see something new and you’re like ‘Oh, my God!’” he said. “But that rarely happens. Most discoveries happen in the lab when you’re comparing specimens and wracking your brain — this doesn’t make sense! And suddenly everything falls into place and you realize you're looking at a new species.
“Discovery is often a study in frustration.”
Featured image at top: UC Associate Professor Eric Tepe removes a specimen from a sliding cabinet in the newly relocated Margaret H. Fulford Herbarium in Rieveschl Hall. Photo/Michael Miller
UC Associate Professor Eric Tepe, left, talks to UC student Jacob Bryant in the Margaret H. Fulford Herbarium. Photo/Michael Miller
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