[Andrew C. Sanders]

Sorry I'm late to this discussion, but I've only recently begun to participate in the CNPS forum and only found this area and discussion today.

Background: I'm the herbarium curator at UC Riverside.

Peter: Over the past several years, I've experienced increasing frustration with the process of submitting botanical specimens and the timely accessioning of those specimens by herbaria. This now amounts to over 100 specimens I've submitted to several herbaria since the mid-1990's.


That's discouraging to me. I don't want to see potential collectors getting frustrated and possibly discouraged: the need for more collection and documentation of the flora is acute. I could go on at length about how poor our documentation of the flora of CA (and almost everywhere else) is, esp. from a floristic/biogeographic/conservation perspective.

And -- 100 specimens since the mid-1990s is NOT a heavy load and someone should have taken care of this for you by now. Here at UCR we routinely process that many specimens in a day.

Peter: Some of these herbaria are either non-functional, apparently (e.g., Sonoma State University), or do not have any data posted in the California Online Consortium (College of the Redwoods). I realize some of these collections have not been accessioned, or the data has not been provided to the Online Consortium. This is a very serious shortcoming, in my opinion, as a potentially extensive amount of botanical information is not available to other botanists, in particular to authors of flora such as the Jepson Manual and Flora of North America.

Inactive or minimally active herbaria are less likely to be able to help you. It sounds like you've been in contact with the wrong herbaria. Have you checked with CAS and/or UC Davis or Berkeley? You need to find a place with at least one dedicated curator type who wants to support and encourage you, and who has at least a little time to do so.

Peter: I take my botanical work seriously, and have made efforts to improve my botanical collecting and specimen preparations over the years,

Good. Thank you!

Peter: although I rarely get any feedback from herbarium curators, despite my requests to provide me some.

Bad. But, given the places you've mentioned, I'm not sure there's anyone there who can answer you. Is College of the Redwoods a community college, for example? If so, the person in charge is likely taking care of the herbarium in their spare time after teaching five classes -- and with no support staff at all.

Peter: After hearing several admonitions (by some) and gentle encouragement (by others) at conferences over the past 15 years to do more collecting and submitting of specimens, I must say my efforts at this time feel largely wasted. Perhaps some of these speakers (Dean Taylor, Ellen Dean, Dean Kelch, et al.) or other institutional and academic botanists can provide some information on why submitted specimens are not accessioned in a timely manner, if the need for collecting is so great (an observation with which I agree, based on the sparse collection data available online). I also understand that some herbaria are not well funded or staffed, in which case I feel that the specimens might be moved to other herbaria where accessioning and data posting might be done more expeditiously.

No herbaria are well staffed or funded, at least not to my knowledge. Even the best-staffed could easily use 10X the people they have. Things move too slowly because there are not enough hands to do all the work. Herbarium work is VERY labor-intensive, but we only have a few people.

Peter: In spite of my frustration, I will continue to submit specimens, although I'm not so sure about which herbaria I trust to accession material and post the data in a reasonable amount of time (a year?).

Good. Look in CCH for specimens from your area that were collected in the past 2-3 years and see which herbaria curated them. That's one way you can find active places, at least with respect to new specimen curation.


Peter: However, I am interested in engaging others in a discussion about how to make more collections and accompanying data available (through the Online Consortium), so that the work of individuals is not wasted, and all botanists can have access to their work.

Thank you. I'm glad to hear that you're still trying, even though you've been running into walls.