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Carnegie Museum of Natural History

One of the Four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh

Plant Specimen Images Now Online

By Bonnie Isaac

Anne Barber training Botany staff Mason Heberling and Bonnie Isaac to use the new imaging station
Anne Barber training Mason Heberling and Bonnie Isaac to use the new imaging station for our NSF grant.

 

Anne Barber, the Research Project Coordinator for the Mid-Atlantic Megalopolis TCN recently came to Pittsburgh to train the Botany staff (Bonnie Isaac, Mason Heberling, and Sarah Williams) to use our new imaging equipment.  We spent a day and a half learning how to image our specimens and get them up on the Mid-Atlantic Herbaria portal. We are now up and running and images of our specimens are making it to the internet.

We will be photographing the specimens from Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Maryland, and D.C. for this project. These images will be added to the portal for the mid-Atlantic region over the next three years.  You can search our specimen database to find out what specimens we have or watch for the images of these specimens to start appearing.

What was the lucky specimen to be first imaged and added to the portal?  Just by chance, it was a specimen that I collected in Huntingdon County back in 1995.

Amorpha fruticosa specimen
Amorpha fruticosa specimen from Pennsylvania collected by Bonnie Isaac, first specimen imaged with the new imaging station.

 

Bonnie Isaac is the Collection Manager in the Section of Botany. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.