Location: Floral and Nursery Plants Research
2023 Annual Report
Objectives
Objective 1: Maintain, curate, and enhance the National Arboretum Herbaria as premier scientific collections documenting important agricultural research, genetic resources, and as critical reference tools for protecting American agricultural biosecurity.
Sub-objective 1.A: Actively manage the Herbaria in line with modern best practices and grow the collections through expanded vouchering efforts, strategic partnerships, and new acquisitions and exchanges.
Sub-objective 1.B: Continue digitizing the Herbaria and related assets and increase efforts to make these resources widely available to researchers, stakeholders, and the public.
Sub-objective 1.C: Modernize the taxonomic arrangement of the Herbaria collections to reflect contemporary systematic classifications.
Objective 2: Provide accurate taxonomic identification and nomenclature for plant research material and genetic resources, and ensure that information is communicated to USDA/ARS researchers, stakeholders, other federal agencies, and the public.
Approach
Work will focus on the management and curation of the National Arboretum Herbarium collections as critical scientific resources. We will develop and codify collections management policies for the collections, and expansion of the herbaria will be accomplished through increased collecting efforts and collaborations that will ensure sustained growth, both physically and digitally. Continued digitization of the herbaria’s holdings will involve imaging, data capture (transcription) of specimen metadata, and publishing to our collections management system/portal. The arrangement of the herbarium collections will also be updated and physically rearranged to reflect modern taxonomic classifications. Additionally, we will provide plant identification services, supplying plant material for researchers’ use, producing scientific presentations, and leading tours and outreach opportunities.
Progress Report
This report is for a new Project 8020-21000-081-000D, which began March 20, 2023. As this project has just begun, there is little significant progress to report in FY23. Please see the report for Project 8020-21000-080-000D for more information on overall progress for FY23.
Advancements have been made on the collection management system being developed for the herbarium collections, including the completion of several custom metadata fields and standardization of all taxonomic names using internal data cleaning tools. Significantly, the entirety of the collection’s metadata is now imported and managed directly in the platform, whereas, previously, each subset of the data was stored as separate datafiles in different locations. Quality control of the data and entering of additional collection metadata continues at a steady pace. Several potential partners have already been contacted to gauge interest in vouchering their collections, including three (new) ARS stations and four external entities. Work has commenced on rearranging the lycophyte, monilophyte, and gymnosperm specimens to an updated arrangement based on modern classifications; so far, the lycophytes and “fern allies” have been updated. Additionally, we have started a large curatorial and preservation intervention project on a subset of the herbarium: the USDA Sugarcane Collection, a collection of thousands of grass specimens that have never been inventoried or properly curated since coming to the National Arboretum more than 30 years ago. Since the start of this new project, we have processed 1768 incoming specimens, sent out 85 specimens as gifts or exchange, added seven new standard specimens, mounted 213 new specimens, made eight plant identifications, and welcomed 110 visitors through tours and research visits.
Accomplishments
