OVERVIEW OF THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA HERBARIUM by Alan R. Franck, June 2018 (http://florida.plantatlas.usf.edu/documents/USF-Herbarium.pdf) Figure 1. George Cooley with the USF Herbarium where it originated at Chinsegut Hill, ca. 1958–1959 (courtesy of The Tampa Tribune). TABLE OF CONTENTS History of the USF Herbarium (1956–2018) .................................................................... 1 George Ralph Cooley ........................................................................................... 3 James Davis Ray, Jr. ............................................................................................ 7 Robert William Long ........................................................................................... 8 Olga Korhoven Lakela ......................................................................................... 8 Maurice Mulvania .............................................................................................. 10 Margaret Lois Gilbert ......................................................................................... 10 Photographic Tour of the Herbarium .................................................................. 13 Additional Historic USF Herbarium Photos........................................................ 24 References ......................................................................................................... 30 Overview of the Collections .......................................................................................... 32 Online Activity .................................................................................................. 35 Filing System ..................................................................................................... 36 Personnel ........................................................................................................... 37 History & Roles of Herbaria (ca. 40,000 BC–present).................................................... 39 Specimen Protocols ....................................................................................................... 45 Collecting .......................................................................................................... 44 Mounting ........................................................................................................... 48 Modified Archer’s Glue Formula ....................................................................... 50 Digitization ........................................................................................................ 50 Plant Morphology Photos (for Atlas) .................................................................. 56 Plant/Fungal DNA Extraction & PCR ................................................................ 57 Selected Publications Utilizing the USF Herbarium Collections..................................... 60 Appendices .................................................................................................................... 76 Table 1. Summary of University of South Florida Herbarium. ca. 300,000 No. of specimens Taxa 93% vascular plants, 5% algae, 1% bryophytes, 1% fungi Geography 42% Florida, 21% SE USA, 14% continental USA + Canada, 21% Latin America, 8% Eastern Hemisphere Index herbariorum USF acronym Mailing Address 4202 E. Fowler Avenue, ISA 2015, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33620, USA Street Address 12010 USF Cherry Drive Campus Building Code CMC 9–11 & Rooms Website http://florida.plantatlas.usf.edu/ Phone 1(813)974-7602 1 HISTORY of the USF HERBARIUM (1956–2016) The University of South Florida (USF) Herbarium was planned with the founding of USF in 1956, in cooperation with John S. Allen, the first president of USF. It originated at the Chinsegut Hill manor house in February 1958 under the patronage of George R. Cooley, an investment banker from New York and a personal friend of John Allen. The first specimen officially accessioned into the herbarium was a specimen of the Florida endemic Calydorea caelestina collected by John Allen in 1951. In 1959 USF hired the first director of the herbarium, James D. Ray, Jr., who was the first faculty member at USF and later became Dean of the College of Natural Sciences. The herbarium moved to “rooms 1029 and 1030” of the Administration Building (formerly ADM, now the John & Grace Allen Building [ALN]) at the Tampa campus in August 1960. At the time of its move to the Tampa campus, it contained 19,432 specimens, built up largely by the efforts of George Cooley. In the fall of 1960 during the opening convocation of USF, George Cooley was presented USF’s first degree, an Honorary Doctoral Degree. Olga K. Lakela was hired as curator in 1960. Upon completion of the Life Sciences Building (LIF), the herbarium moved there in Sep 1961, eventually occupying rooms 170–179. Robert W. Long became curator in 1962 and was promoted to director of the herbarium in 1965. Clinton Dawes arrived to USF in 1964 and was nearly solely responsible for amassing the algal collection. The cultivated and Neotropical collections greatly benefited from the first director of the USF Botanical Gardens, Derek Burch, hired in 1969. Mosses of the Tampa Bay Area was published by Diane Wagner-Merner [Diane Te Strake] et al. in 1970. A Flora of Tropical Florida, a descriptive flora of Collier, Miami-Dade, and Monroe Counties written by Robert Long and Olga Lakela, was published in 1971 and shortly thereafter the herbarium accessioned its 100,000th specimen. Olga Lakela received an Honorary Doctoral Degree from USF upon her retirement in 1973. Richard P. Wunderlin was hired as curator in 1973 and became director in 1976 after Robert Long’s death. In 1976, Ferns of Florida by Olga Lakela and Robert Long and Plants of the Tampa Bay Area by Olga Lakela, Robert Long, et al. were also published. Guide to the Vascular Plants of Central Florida, written by Richard Wunderlin, covered a 30-county region of peninsular Florida and was published in 1982. In the fall of 1989, Alice F. Tryon and Rolla M. Tryon began a several year long stay at USF, studying ferns and generously supporting departmental botany lectures. The Atlas of Florida Vascular Plants was launched in 1995 by Richard Wunderlin, Bruce F. Hansen (curator from 1979–2014), and Edwin L. Bridges (of the FTG herbarium at the time) with technical assistance from Shawn Landry (a USF masters student at the time who later became part of the USF faculty). It was briefly distributed as a CD-ROM in 1996. The Atlas provided county- level distribution data and other details for all vascular plants native or naturalized in Florida. In 1996, a National Science Foundation Collections Improvement grant for nearly $138,000 was awarded. With matching funds from USF, this permitted the renovation and expansion of the herbarium, including the installation of compactors. The first state-wide guide specific to the native and naturalized flora of Florida, Guide to the Vascular Plants of Florida, written by Richard Wunderlin, was published in 1998. Both the Guide 2 and the Atlas rely mainly upon specimen records from the four major Florida herbaria (FLAS, FSU, FTG, and USF). The Atlas interface is licensed by USF Patents and Licensing, with licenses having been sold to other institutions (e.g. to cover the floras of Alabama, Kentucky, Indiana, New York, and Tennessee). In 2003, digitization of the herbarium’s collections was initiated as a component of the Atlas, providing images and searchable data of the vascular plant specimens. Bruce Hansen, co-authored the second edition of the Guide to the Vascular Plants of Florida published in 2006 and the third edition published in 2011. The Seaweeds of Florida was released in 2008 by Clinton Dawes and Arthur Mathieson, covering nearly 700 species of macroalgae. After residing in LIF for over 50 years and accruing about 276,000 specimens, the herbarium was moved to the College of Arts & Sciences Multidisciplinary Complex (CMC, formerly the Physics and Mathematics building [PHY]) in Nov 2014. In 2016 the online website was changed to the Atlas of Florida Plants upon inclusion of bryophytes in 2016. Figure 2. Olga Lakela and Provost Carl Riggs holding the 1st specimen accessioned (Calydorea caelestina) into the herbarium, collected by USF President John Allen (taken in 1960s in LIF, photographer unknown). 3 GEORGE RALPH COOLEY (1896–1986) As a long-time friend of USF’s first president John S. Allen, George R. Cooley had a central role in the initial development and continued support of the USF Herbarium. George collected many specimens himself for the herbarium and procured thousands of specimens from numerous institutions and individuals. He financed a large part of the expenses of the herbarium, including salary, equipment, and collecting expeditions throughout the 1950s–1980s. He also was responsible for the acquisition of countless important books in the herbarium library (the George R. Cooley Library), many rare and out-of-print. Figure 4. Opening convocation for USF on 26 Sep 1960 with John Allen on the left and George Cooley front-right receiving USF’s first degree, an Honorary Doctoral Degree, in front of the ALN [formerly ADM] building (courtesy of The Tampa Tribune). George and his wife Myra were very close friends with John and Grace Allen. The majority of George’s archives at the New York State Library consist of about 100 correspondences with John and Grace, from the 1940s–1980s. The earliest letters are dated in 1948, when John left New York to become vice