THE CONNELL MEMORIAL HERBARIUM

On October 13,1976
The Herbarium of the University of New Brunswick was renamed ;
The Connell Memorial Herbarium
in honour of

Dr.Katharine M.Connell ,BA,MA,PhD.
1899-1973
Dr.Connell's collection
of the plants of Carleton County ,New Brunswick
were donated to the herbarium as a tribute to
Dr. Connell ,
mother , educator and botanist.


Description of the Connell Memorial Herbarium

An herbarium contains specimens which are generally pressed and dried plants or parts of a plant, fastened to special herbarium paper and accompanied by a label. The label contains the scientific name, collection location and date, name of collector, and often descriptions of the habitat of the collection site. The specimens are stored in special cabinets that are more or less insect and fireproof.

This herbarium is the largest collection of specimens from the New Brunswick flora. There are approximately 60,000 vascular plant specimens from New Brunswick, 10,000 non-New Brunswick vascular plants, and about 1,000 algae, mainly seaweeds.

The herbarium is a critical resource for people interested in New Brunswick's flora. Taxonomists, evolutionary and conservation biologists, botanical and environmental consultants and ecologists rely upon the herbarium for identification of plants and documentation of their variation, distribution, and ecology. To access this information, the specimens must be properly curated and arranged in an easily accessible order which computerisation would greatly facilitate. Plant scientists regularly collect specimens to document the occurrence of plant species as parts of taxonomic, floristic, evolutionary, conservation, or ecological studies. It is essential for scientific research that voucher specimens are safely and permanently stored in herbaria

Mission Statement
The mission of the Connell Memorial Herbarium is to house correctly identified representative scientific specimens of the New Brunswick Flora, which includes mainly vascular plants (ferns and their relatives, conifers, and flowering plants), and a small collection of algae. Toward this mission the specimens must be maintained in good condition, arranged in an orderly fashion, and accessible to the public. The herbarium is a research and teaching facility and serves as the official repository for specimens of endangered and threatened New Brunswick plants.

Teaching in the Herbarium
Teaching is an important component of the herbarium mission (see mission statement following). Much of the teaching takes the form of individual use of the herbarium by students in the Departments of Biology, Forestry and other departments. Herbarium specimens are regularly used in plant biology courses to illustrate various morphological and phylogenetic relationships. This year, as in previous years, several students in the undergraduate course, Taxonomy of Seed Plants, undertook individual projects in the herbarium.

Research in the Herbarium
The herbarium is regularly used by many individuals to identify plants or collect information about plant distributions and ecology. We had approximately 400 herbarium visits in 1995.
Work is now underway to update the Flora of New Brunswick which was originally published in 1986. This will involve going over all the collection checking identifications, bringing names up to date to modern nomenclatural standards, redoing the distribution maps, producing some new illustrations, making corrections and redoing some of the keys. Help will be needed with many aspects of this revision.

Curation
Curation, including care of existing scientific plant specimens and incorporation of new specimens, is essential to the quality and usefulness of herbaria. Curation in 1995 included the incorporation of more than 1,000 new specimens of New Brunswick vascular plants into the collection. Many damaged specimens were also repaired.

Computerisation
The computer centre has been very helpful in our efforts to laser print our specimen labels which include a digitized map of the province. Each laser printed sheet contains six labels which may be separated along perforations. The next step is to consolidate the label information in a comprehensive database. Eventually it is hoped that all the herbarium specimens will be included in a herbarium database. When the herbarium is fully computerised, one may quite readily obtain information about any group of plants (one or more species, genera, family, or other taxa), province region (town, county or the whole province), or ecological community.

Herbarium Staff and Volunteers
People working in the herbarium consist of the curator and volunteers. Presently there are no paid helpers in the herbarium other than the curator who directs activities in the herbarium but also has research and teaching responsibilities.
The herbarium has been blessed by the involvement of a number of enthusiastic volunteers including Dr. C. Mary Young, Virginia Peters, Dorothy McFarlane and Susan Belfry.

Contact Information
Ph.: 506 452-6205
Email: herbunb@unb.ca
Address: Bag Service # 45111
Department of Biology
University of New Brunswick
Fredericton, NB,
E3B 6E1


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Maintained by: casey@unb.ca
Last Update: 8 January 2002
This document: http://www.unb.ca/departs/science/biology/Herb.html