Central Wyoming College Herbarium

Please contact Dr. Richard W. Scott, Herbarium Curator for information.

rscott@wyoming.com
307-857-3140
1446 Cowboy Lane
Riverton, WY 82501

Description of a Herbarium

A herbarium is a collection of dried plants.  It can be any size, from a small, personal collection of only a few plants to a large, scientific collection of hundreds of thousands of specimens.  Large collections are typically affiliated with museums, universities, or other plant-oriented entities and in a few cases may exceed a million specimens. 

Small, personal collections are stored in looseleaf notebooks or boxes where they may be easily accessed by various methods.  Large, scientific collections, on the other hand, are organized and managed according to a standard protocol.  Specimens are dried flat within certain size limits and glued to special acid-free herbarium paper sheets.  Labels are affixed to the sheets and contain information about the specimen, such as habitat, location, date of collection, state, county, and elevation.  Specimens are stored in special hermetically-sealed cabinets to prevent insect and fungal damage.  Several schemes in use today to organize specimens within the herbarium cabinets in a way that makes it easy to find the desired specimens.  Larger herbaria are managed by one or more curators and may emphasize special groups of plants, or more likely, they are broad-based and represent all major groups of plants.

Value of a Herbarium

An analogy is often made between herbaria and libraries.  Both are storehouses of information that can be accessed by informed users.  Both can provide the nuclei for projects dependent on this stored information.  Herbarium information is in several forms. One is the information inherent in the dried, pressed specimen itself; the second is information about the specimen on the label; and the third is information that is synthesized and added to a modern database.  A few more than 20,000 out of 40,000+ specimens at the CWC Herbarium are now in the database and we are working to get them all entered.  One major value of a database is that distribution information may be easily obtained to make a map of where a particular species occurs.  This kind of information is highly valued by resource managers to help them in decision-making processes.  Thus, the more specimens we have of the most species we can find, the more valuable the collection. This requires space and continuing effort at acquisition of specimens.  We don’t stop at just one specimen as we need representation of different seasons, different growth stages, different substrates, and different localities.  The more information we have, the better we can define species’ environmental requirements and distribution patterns.  And, like a library, the better we do this, the better we serve patrons of the facility.

History of the CWC Herbarium

The Central Wyoming College Herbarium is a scientific collection of 40,000 specimens, with approximately 6000 more to be mounted and filed.  The collection began with a small group of less than 100 specimens in 1975 and is now 27 years old.  The collection is centered on vascular plants, those with a conduction system for water and nutrients.  We also have about 1000 non-vascular plant specimens, mostly lichens and mosses.  About half of the records are presently in a database.  While the collection is a general one, we do have concentrations and special interests in weedy plants, alpine plants, Fremont County and Wyoming plants, and plants of the West.  Recently we have adopted an alphabetical filing system. 

The acronym for the herbarium, as listed in Index Herbariorum, is CWC.  Visitors and users are welcome to use the collection.  Workspace is available, as well as binocular microscopes and computers with internet access.  We have a small library with manuals and floras of western states and other regions, a map collection with hardcopy and software maps, and a small periodical collection of about 1000 reprints and articles.  The herbarium was previously located on the campus of Central Wyoming College until late last summer.  It is now housed in the new Fremont County Weed and Pest building at 1446 Cowboy Lane in Riverton.  Support is solely through grants and donations from the public.

The CWC Herbarium/Fremont County Weed and Pest connection

A facility such as the CWC Herbarium provides a bridge between pure science and the application of scientific knowledge by management organizations such as Weed and Pest.  At the herbarium we are able to document the occurrence and distribution of weed species through our collections.  This information is used for reference, for map construction, and for day-to-day management by Weed and Pest.  Just as important, and often overlooked, is the information contained in rare plant collections, and collections of other types of plant species.  These collections  provide a more complete picture of plant communities, vegetation types, and species presence in areas where Weed and Pest undertakes management activities.  Invasive species can thus be aggressively managed within limits imposed by the presence of non-target plant species.