you
this is the herbarium it's a collection
of over 140,000 plant specimens from
around the world we have some of them
laid out here as an example they date to
the early 1800s so around 1820 to be
more exact collected by AAF homes
they're some of the first plant
specimens collected like in Canada and
house and herbarium so they're very very
old specimens the herbarium actually
comes from two different collections
that have mcgill one on this campus at
the McDonald campus that was started in
1907 when the campus was first endowed
and first started working in agriculture
and the other one goes back was further
in that it was started in 1856 but it
was started with the collection of
plants that were collected in 1821 to
1825 the actual first curator the first
person who took care of the herbarium
for a year was William Dawson who was
basically one of the first Canadian
study recognized worldwide as a
scientist so is there a particular plant
that you'd want to see like any yeah
okay so the the collections organized by
families and we have the orchids in this
cabinet each folder contains different
species in general and the folders are
color-coded according to region so for
instance if we want four kids from the
Arctic we can look at this folder here
we use this cardboard to take it out
like pizza out of an oven so that we
keep this bestfriend nice and flat this
is an example of a calypso and this is
the specimen itself so this Calypso bull
Bosa was collected in the Yukon in 1967
the part of the herbarium that started
here was for teaching but most of the
herbarium most of the reason that
herbarium is here is because when people
do research on plants they need to have
the evidence of their research the
vouchers of their work are kept here so
that's the nucleus of the collection is
made from research vouchers but then it
becomes useful because it becomes a
resource for identification of plants
for looking at distribution of plants
over time especially look because our
herbarium is so old it's the oldest one
in Canada invasive species when did they
come in where did they come and how did
they spread weedy species where plants
hug at the background how have the
populations been maintained or not so
those kind of studies can all be done
using
specimens this is the workroom this is
where we process plants before moving
them into the collection here we take
pictures of the plants we mount them on
specimen paper we can also use
microscope to identify the specimens
themselves preparing the plant specimen
for integration to the collection it's a
very delicate process and people who
especially to arts and crafts would
thrive off of it you know like very
small details but it's also like it has
a meditative quality to it like it's a
good way to just like take a break from
your day and come and spend some time
doing something like this