Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-2021

Abstract

The Marshall University Herbarium (MUHW) is located on the third floor of the Science Building at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, United States. It was founded in the 1930's by Dr. Frank A. Gilbert when Marshall was still Marshall College. Today, MUHW is the second largest herbarium in West Virginia with about 50,000 specimens, including 20 types. Mostly composed of vascular plants, the herbarium also contains small collections of non-vascular plants, fungi, algae, fossils, and some ethnobotanical material, mainly brought from Ecuador by one of the former curators, Dr. Dan Evans between the 1980's and 2000's. Apart from these biological collections, the Herbarium also has a small library and many other documents from former curators: letters from 1920-1930 written by Dr. Gilbert during the early years of MUHW, and research, teaching, and personal documents from Dr. Evans. In order to process the documentation present in the Herbarium, the MUHW curator reached out to the chair of the Special Collections Department at Marshall University, whose focus is precisely on manuscript collections like this and their historical relevance to the University and the Huntington area.

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Copyright © 2021 Society of Herbarium Curators. Reprinted with permission.

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