A
History of the George Safford Torrey Herbarium (CONN)
by
Donald H. Les
(adapted from a seminar entitled "Diary of a CONN man - the evolution of research plant collections at
the University of Connecticut" presented on 4 April, 2013)
I.
Introduction. Like many academic endeavors, the CONN
herbarium was born amidst a struggle of ideologies.
III. 1893-1899: The "school" becomes the "Storrs Agricultural College"
a. The College's first graduating class
comprised 40% women
b. Timeline
for the Storrs Agricultural College (botany and
horticulture part ways)
1. Alfred Gurdon Gulley
2. The Department of Botany and Military Science
3. Henry Arthur Ballou
a. The CONN herbarium began
with student collections required for H. A. Ballou's botany course.
1. Ballou's efforts were sneered upon by
his eventual successor G. S. Torrey
2. Ballou's innovative botany course
provided 121 specimens
to found the fledgling "Herbarium
of
Storrs Agricultural College", which originated on December 31,
1897
IV.
1899-1933: An expanding influence leads to renaming as the "Connecticut Agricultural
College"
a. Timeline
for the Connecticut Agricultural College
The Connecticut
Agricultural College Herbarium featured a variety of different
labels
b. Ballou's successor at the College was Edward A. White
c. White's successor was A. F. Blakeslee, the
first true botanist hired for this position
d. Blakeslee gained stature as a prominent
plant geneticist
1. Blakeslee also was a staunch advocate of
botanical research collections
e. Blakeslee was succeeded by Edmund W. Sinnott, who
contributed minimally to the collections
f. Also hired at the same time as Sinnott
was George Safford Torrey,
who had no intentions of staying!!
1. Torrey held the
longest tenure in charge of the herbarium, which he developed
immensely.
a. some of the specimens
that Torrey found upon his arrival; it took a while for him to
realize
that they were collected in Texas, not
Connecticut.
2. In 1920, the
herbarium held only 1,630
specimens
3. Torrey used
unorthodox methods at first; his "collection numbers" actually
represented the
page
numbers of his field
notebook
a. This is why there are some specimens that share
the same number. Torrey had a practice
of renumbering his collections
from 1- each time he
visited a new site.
4. Torrey also used a
type of "shorthand"
when writing his field notes.
5. Under Torrey's
supervision, the herbarium grew by about 35,000 specimens.
V. 1933-1939: Connecticut Agricultural College becomes
Connecticut State College
a. Timeline
for the Connecticut State College
b. The "Connecticut
Statesmen" survived for a year before being replaced by
the Husky mascot and team name
c. Torrey was the only botanist in the
department during this period.
d. Labels
from the Herbarium of [the] Connecticut
State College
VI. 1939-present: The University of Connecticut is established
a. Timeline
for the University of Connecticut
b. in 1948, the herbarium contained about 16,663 specimens, a
number too low to be included among the major herbaria.
1. The founding date
also was erroneously
given as 1915, when it actually was established by
Ballou in 1897.
a.
Torrey also attributed the first major collections to
"Peterson", who actually was "Patterson". Difficulty
with
reading herbarium labels can
cause many discrepancies.
c. Torrey began a campaign to increase the
herbarium holdings so that the collection could be listed by
acronym in Index Herbariorum 1. Acquisitions
from K. P. Jansson &
A. W. Driggs added more than 6,000 specimens.
2. Specimens from J. F. Collins added
nearly 3,000 sheets to the herbarium
3. Since 1940, Torrey's
primary objective was to acquire the collection of local
botanist E. H. Eames,
who possessed nearly 30,000
plant specimens.
a.
Torrey's dream became a
reality in 1948, when the University finally acquired
Eames' collection.
b.
However, no acronym was
assigned in 1948, pending the accessioning of the new
Eames material.
4. The first CONN acronym labels
appear on specimens from 1949 (but may have been added later -
the date is April 1st!!)
d. Wendell
Camp joined the department in 1953 and eventually became
Torrey's successor in charge of the herbarium.
e. Camp was succeeded in 1963 by Howard Pfeifer, who
added more than 1,500 of his own specimens.
f. Following Pfeifer's retirement, the
herbarium was supervised for 4 years by Robert K. Jansen.
g. After Jansen left for Texas in 1991, Kent Holsinger became
interim director of CONN until 1992.
h. CONN's 100,000th specimen was
accessioned in 1992, based on an earlier estimate.
i. Don
Les joined the EEB faculty in 1992 and also was
appointed Director of the CONN Herbarium.
a. The "top 10" contributors to
the CONN herbarium as of 2013.
b. Some major recent
acquisitions were from Jesup
(2002) and The Delta
Institute (2011).
c. The collection
contains a number of historical
novelties.
d. Phase I of the
databasing project was slow to develop.
e. Phase II: Substantial
progress was made when A.
Doran became collection manager and BG-Base was
implemented.
f. Phase III:
Significant progress continued when Robert Capers was hired as
Andy Doran's replacement.
a. A
substantial NSF Grant
during this time brought the database plans to fruition.
1. CONN currently has more than 170,000
specimens digitized
(data) and imaged at high resolution; all data are
available through various web portals.
2. The NSF grant provided training for more than
50 students in various
aspects of collections management.
3. The databse project runed up some
surprises, including specimens collected by Henry David
Thoreau!
a. We arranged for a
Thoreau specimen to become our 100,000th databased
specimen.
b. One specimen matched
an entry in Thoreau's
journal.
c. Discovery of the
Thoreau material in 2010 was widely publicized.
1.
The discovery was publicized by NSF
2.
The CONN herbarium organized a special lecture to
celebrate the discovery and acknowledge the work of the
recently late L. J.
Mehrhoff.
a. Les Mehrhoff's field books
b. Edwin Eame's field notes
g. The work is not over -
CONN accessions have doubled
in the past 20 years.
h. How we use the CONN
database
1. GBIF provider (also
iDigBio, BG-base multisite, Consortium of Northeastern
Herbaria)
2. Global initiatives
VII. Thanks to all!!