Rachel accepted a permanent job at the University and Jepson Herbaria on the Berkeley campus. She will be working with the collection of mosses, algae, bryophytes, pteridophytes, and other non-vascular plants.
An herbarium is like a reference library, but instead of books it has dried, pressed plants with detailed descriptions of when, where and by whom they were collected. This herbarium has a collection of over 2.2 million specimens, some of which date to the 1860s from California. The specimens are used to verify species observed in the field, study plant variation and evolution over space and time, and (in rare cases) used in destructive research by taking DNA samples. This herbarium just completed the world's first DNA sequencing of a non-vascular plant. Non-vascular plants are just a bunch of early-evolutionary species (as opposed to flowering plants--gymnosperms, and conifers--angiosperms, which are all came much later). See the website if you want to know more.
2 comments:
"She will be working with the collection of mosses, algae, bryophytes, pteridophytes, and other non-vascular plants."
I work with some people like that too.
-Paul
An herbarium is like a reference library, but instead of books it has dried, pressed plants with detailed descriptions of when, where and by whom they were collected. This herbarium has a collection of over 2.2 million specimens, some of which date to the 1860s from California. The specimens are used to verify species observed in the field, study plant variation and evolution over space and time, and (in rare cases) used in destructive research by taking DNA samples. This herbarium just completed the world's first DNA sequencing of a non-vascular plant. Non-vascular plants are just a bunch of early-evolutionary species (as opposed to flowering plants--gymnosperms, and conifers--angiosperms, which are all came much later). See the website if you want to know more.
Philip
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