The NEBC Nonvascular Herbarium

Housed in the Farlow Herbarium, the NEBC Nonvascular Herbarium has close to 7,000 collections of New England lichens, bryophytes, algae, and fungi collected by the early members of the botanical club and other regional botanists such as W. G. Farlow, J. F. Collins, E. D. Merrill, C. G. Pringle, E. B. Chamberlain, E. B. Harger and C. E. Cummings. The more recent collections include those of D. R. Bowley, who worked on lichens on the summit of Mt Mansfield, VT.

The focus of the ongoing curatorial work is the preservation of the 19th century collections and the identification of collections with no or questionable identifications. The curatorial work has dovetailed with the HUH digitization projects, and the NEBC lichen and bryophyte collections can now be accessed by going to:

Lichen portal: http://lichenportal.org/portal/
Bryophyte portal: http://bryophyteportal.org/portal/
HUH website for both lichens and bryophytes: http://huh.harvard.edu/pages/digital-resources

Shortly, 500 NEBC fungal collections will be accessible on line by going to the
Macrofungal portal: http://mycoportal.org//portal/index.php
or at the HUH website (address above).

People

Curator of Nonvascular Plants – Elizabeth Kneiper
Curatorial Advisory Committee: Dr. Donald Pfister, Dr. Michaela Schmull, Genevieve Tocci, and Dr. Harold Brotzman.

Visiting the NEBC Nonvascular Herbarium:

Visitors are welcome. Please contact Elizabeth Kneiper (ekneiper@aol.com) and Dr. Michaela Schmull (mschmull@oeb.havard.edu).

Requests for Loans:

All NEBC Nonvascular Herbarium loan requests are arranged through the Harvard University Herbaria. Please mail loan requests to: huh-requests@oeb.harvard.edu

Volunteering

The NEBC Nonvascular Herbarium welcomes volunteers willing to do curatorial work, collection identifications and data entry. Curatorial work sessions are held in the Farlow Herbarium on Wednesdays from 3:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. and on most first Saturdays of the month from 9:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. The scheduled sessions are posted on the NEBC home page. Please contact Elizabeth Kneiper (ekneiper@aol.com) to confirm the date of a work session you wish to attend.

The digitization projects at HUH include only minimal data capture. Volunteers who would like to become citizen scientists can volunteer to complete the entry of data off the labels on collections by going to the sites listed below.

Tips for data entry can be found at: http://lbcc1.acis.ufl.edu

For lichens: http://lichenportal.org/portal/

For bryophytes (mosses, liverworts and hornworts): http://bryophyteportal.org/portal

Interested mycologists can visit the following website to earn spore, mycelium, and mushroom badges for their data entry: www.notesfromnature.org