Fall Foliage Week begins at the end of September, kicking off the start of “leaf-peeping” season, meaning many people will be driving to see fall foliage. The show of fall colors highlights the beautiful landscape of Kentucky, while also bringing focus to the biodiversity of plant species in the region.
Nestled within Eastern Kentucky University’s (EKU) state-of-the-art Science Building, an ever-growing herbarium boasts the largest collection of scientifically documented preserved plant specimens in Kentucky. According to Dr. Sally Chambers, curator of EKU’s herbarium, the collections contain about 117,500 plant specimens, with many being native to Kentucky and the region. Some of the specimens even date back as far as the mid-1800s.
“EKU’s herbarium and natural history collections represent another incredible resource that we have on campus, contributing to scientific research and the student learning experience,” said EKU President David McFaddin. “Having the largest herbarium in the state is only fitting as we are home to an impressive Science Building on the Campus Beautiful, and in the heart of Kentucky’s natural beauty.”
Arranged systematically by major plant lineages then alphabetically by family, genus and species, the plant specimens in the herbarium have been pressed, dried, mounted, barcoded and digitized—giving scientists and students around the world access to EKU’s massive collection. Since the entire collection was digitized in 2019, EKU’s herbarium has been cited in more than 900 publications, Chambers noted.
She said herbaria are used for “all kinds of things,” from studying the geographic range of species and climate patterns to evolutionary biology to population genetics, “all of which help us understand our regional biodiversity and assist with conservation efforts.”
Chambers’ research focuses on fern ecology and evolutionary biology to “help us understand how ferns are related to each other using molecular information,” as she simply explained, “why they’re in this geographic location and not that location.”
The Kentucky native has studied a particular fern species that she calls “a Peter Pan fern, because it never grows up.” She said it grows in places like the Red River Gorge and all over Appalachia, but what really has her interested in studying this fern, “aside from the fact that it doesn’t fully grow up, is that its closest relative is found in Costa Rica.”
While EKU’s herbarium provides global access for biological research, students in several biology classes on campus get to tour the herbarium and some get hands-on experience collecting and mounting specimens. Chambers also hopes to bring students from other programs over for a tour of the collections to make this resource more broadly known throughout the campus. For example, she recently gave a tour to agriculture students. As another example, she said students in art fields could use the herbarium for reference material in botanical illustration. Students also work as curatorial assistants in the herbarium, learning the entire process and “essentially acting as a botanist in the field,” Chambers said.
Ethan Hovermale, a junior wildlife management major from Richmond, Kentucky, collaborated with Chambers and other faculty members in a Posters at the Capitol presentation last spring, bringing attention to the importance of natural history collections and the herbarium. An aspiring paleontologist, Hovermale founded the Society of Natural History Student Chapter at EKU and serves as the president of the student organization, hoping to raise funds to preserve the collections at EKU and create forward-facing exhibits in the Science Building.
“My involvement with the collections at EKU is probably one of the most important things I am getting out of my experience at EKU,” Hovermale said. “I very much want to work with museum collections after college, and this is a great way to work with collections that help support my hometown.”
EKU’s herbarium and natural history collection are located on the first floor of the Science Building. The Science Building provides cutting-edge laboratory and instructional spaces for transformative education and research. In addition to the herbarium and natural history collection, the Science Building has a greenhouse and outdoor learning space with native plant species.
EKU’s campus, coined the Campus Beautiful over 100 years ago, has been named a Tree Campus Higher Education Institution by the Arbor Day Foundation for 13 consecutive years.