Week 3: Listing Rare Plant Species Links

Hello all,


This week, besides continuing to catalog the Herbarium specimens, Anna introduced me to a new assignment. I started to organize a spreadsheet with the links for Michigan rare species profiles from various online databases available to the general public (yes, you can also access them!). Later on the list of links will be available at the MiCOB website ( http://www.micob.org ).

One of MiCOB's goals is to centralize the resources for Michigan rare plants so we can improve research and expand knowledge about them. Through the "Rare Plant Species Assignment," students come up with annotated bibliographies of rare plants in order to achieve this goal. You can read more at: http://www.micob.org/research.html

My job is to check which annotated bibliographies have already been made and provide the links for the plant profiles from the following databases:

• Michigan Flora - http://michiganflora.net/
• Michigan Natural Features Inventory Rare Species Explorer - http://mnfi.anr.msu.edu/explorer/search.cfm
• Michigan Natural Features Inventory Abstract - http://mnfi.anr.msu.edu/pub/abstracts.cfm
• USDA Plants Database - http://plants.usda.gov/java/
• vPlants - http://www.vplants.org/
•  Flora of North America - http://floranorthamerica.org
• Tropicos - http://www.tropicos.org/
•  Encyclopedia of Life - http://eol.org/

This experience has been very valuable for me because I am getting familiarized with all these wonderful tools. Before that, I had little knowledge about such databases, and now I am able to navigate and properly search on them. It is highly recommended that students seeking a career in plant sciences get to know and explore these databases and make use of the information available to us. Instead of performing a general search about a certain plant, now I go directly to some of these databases to perform my search confident that I will obtain reliable information. This is useful for my work not only in the herbarium (checking name spelling of plants, changes in taxonomy, etc.) but also in the CMU Greenhouse were I have to provide accurate information about plant families and species to the public.

Overall, I was very excited about my task this week and looking forward to start databasing!

Have a great weekend,

Emilie

Week 2: Listing Herbarium Specimens

This week I started listing the specimens the CMC Herbarium currently possesses so that we can organize better and update label information.  I will be performing this task until our digitizing equipment is up and running!

I was able to list and verify 1175 specimens this week, and this is just one column of one of the many cabinets we have!

Cabinet 1

 It is very tiring job, but I enjoy it a lot because I get to look and analyze different plants as well as improve my plant taxonomy skills!

 One of the 1175 specimens I checked!

This experience exposed me to different types of specimens (old, new, well conserved, not very well conserved, etc.) and I already have some favorites, like the lady fern (Athyrium filix-femina) below!

Lady Fern

Thanks and happy weekend!

Emilie

3rd Annual Meeting of the Michigan Consortium of Botanists

Today, Anna, her graduate students Derek and Rachel, lab students Hillary, Jacob and Lissi, and I (Herbarium assistant) attended the 3rd Annual Meeting of the Michigan Consortium of Botanists at Hillsdale College!

Source: www.hillsdale.edu

The Meeting included talks by Ranessa Cooper (Hillsdale College), Anna Monfils (Central Michigan University), Tim Evans (Grand Valley State University), Catherine Yansa (Michigan State University) and Tony Reznicek (Univetsity of Michigan).

I particularly found the meeting very interesting because it emphasized the importance of digitization of small herbaria. I could understand a lot better the process and institutions involved in this initiative, which was essential for me because that is what I am going to be doing the whole summer!

I also got to know better how the Michigan Consortium of Botanists (MiCOB) is organized,  as well as their work and goals! I got very fascinated about it and I decide to join as a student representative! Hopefully, I will be able to help by analyzing the different subjects through a student perspective !

Check out MiCOB's website it is a great resource for Botanists in Michigan and the Great Lakes area:
http://micob.org/

Emilie

First week working at the Herbarium

This week was my first week at the Herbarium. Anna showed me around and explained the first tasks I had to accomplish. Basically, I had to start moving furniture and computers to make space for the Herbarium's new digitizing equipment!

Anna and Rachel helped me move big file cabinets, as well as pile up the tables and chairs. Keep the pictures below in mind, they will be our "before pictures" and later on you will be able to compare to the "after picture" and see the progress we've made!

Thanks Anna for the opportunity, and I look forward to interacting with Anna's lab students as well!

Emilie
CMC Herbarium Assistant