The Harold M. Tucker Herbarium, located on the first floor of Boone Hall, is the oldest herbarium in Idaho. Since its founding by William Judson Boone in the early days of the college, the herbarium has been used extensively by students as well as botanists and botanical organizations from throughout the country. Boone turned management of the collection over to former student and then-new botany professor Harold M. Tucker in 1930. Tucker knew the region's flora as well as anyone and took hundreds of students on botany field trips to the surrounding countryside. He added extensively to the collection until his death in 1959.
Replacing Tucker was legendary professor Patricia L. Packard who taught botany and served as herbarium curator from 1959 to 1989. Under Packard, the herbarium collection grew several times over, moved to its present location, and was named after Tucker. In 1989, Don Mansfield replaced the retiring Packard and currently serves as the herbarium’s curator and botany professor.
Collections
As of 2011, the herbarium contains about 42,000 vascular plant specimens, mostly from southwestern Idaho and southeastern Oregon. Some, like Artemisia packardiae and Senecio ertterae were discovered by and named for College of Idaho faculty and students.
Current Efforts and Services
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service frequently use the herbarium to document locations of rare or endangered plants, to help identify unknown species, and to locate specific plants. Nationally, the New York Botanical Garden and other research centers around the country use the herbarium to research flora catalogued from the Intermountain West and Pacific Northwest.
Ongoing research projects at The College of Idaho using the collection include elucidating phylogenetic relationships in the genera Lomatium and Cymopterus; producing a flora of the Owyhee Uplift region; and identifying new taxa in southwestern Idaho.
In 2011, the herbarium began work on a National Science Foundation-funded initiative (SWITCH -- SouthWest Idaho: The Comprehensive Herbaria) in collaboration with Boise State University to gather images & data on each specimen in the herbarium. These images and data will be available at the Consortium of Pacific Northwest Herbaria website (www.pnwherbaria.org).
Directions
The herbarium is located on the first floor of Boone Science Hall. View a campus map and directions to campus online.
