It's been so long since I blogged! I am a terrible person, and I apologize to the world and, more importantly, to all those who read and enjoy our blog. I swear to you now, followers, that I would not have been absent for so long had not so many big things been happening in the Herbarium!

Since my last post, we have fulfilled and surpassed the goals that we set at the end of the last semester. Every plant specimen in the CMC Herbarium is now organized alphabetically by genus and species within each family, name verified, and annotated. Additionally, we have decided to use Angiosperm Phylogeny Group III's (APG III) guide for ordering the families within the collection. Originally we were planning on following the Engler and Prantl system of classification as modified by Voss in his Michigan Flora.

However, we quickly realized once we set out to move the families around that Michigan Flora did not have a comprehensive list of the phylogenetic order of all of the families. Furthermore, this organization would not accurately reflect phylogenetic relationships among families in our Herbarium. APG III, outlined by Haston et. al. (2009) reflects the most current understanding of the evolutionary order of plant families. Since Michigan Flora Online, run through the University of Michigan, uses the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group to keep updated with most of the taxonomic and nomenclatural changes since Voss' day, we thought that APG III would be the most accurate way to organize our families.

What this means, in short, is that when someone enters our Herbarium to look for a plant specimen, the families that are most closely related in terms of genetics and evolution will now be filed in close proximity to each other. The possibilities that this creates as a tool for learning are staggering. Many professors already use Herbaria as a learning tool, but now when they or their students go to pull specimens, they will be unconsciously learning systematics in the process.

Personally, I don't believe that this system of organization will make finding families more difficult. We will have a list of each family and its location on a master sheet, as well as labels on the side of each cabinet and within, showing the exact order of the families. On the front of each cabinet, we have also created a table that details the contents of each shelf in that cabinet. Within each family, the specimens are still in alphabetical order by genus and species. Any system of organization will require some referencing of a master list, so why not use a system that allows us to physically visualize the evolution of the plants themselves? This will also make it easier for teachers, since classes usually cover one evolutionary group at a time. With this system, all of the gymnosperms, paleo-herbs, fern families, etc., will be together and easy to pull.

Now, I am proud to announce that in a flurry of motivation, Sascha, myself, and our volunteers Riley and Jason, completely reorganized the families in all 14 cabinets so that they now reflect APG III. We were lucky enough to have extra empty cabinets to expand into, and so we did that as well, making use of all 20 cabinets in the compactor system in our Herbarium.

Before reorganization, some shelves were so packed that we could hardly get the stack out, and I have no doubt that many of our specimens were the worse for wear because of it. Now, hardly any shelf is more than half-way filled, and we have lots of room to expand over time. It was a huge task, but we listened to epic songs such as "Eye of the Tiger," "Dangerzone," and "The Final Countdown," as we went, and it was great fun. We also created a master list of the collection and the location of each family, and we have made a chart for the outside of each cabinet that details the contents of each shelf.

Dr. Monfils and myself also had the honor of showing Dr. Tim Evans of Grand Valley State University (GVSU) around our Herbarium a few weeks ago. He too is interested in reorganizing and digitizing his collection, and it was great to be able to give him advice about our own trouble-shooting during the process.

To take a look at Michigan Flora online and to see their explanation for choosing APG, check out the Herbarium of University of Michigan's website: http://michiganflora.net/changes.aspx.

To check out the APG website, follow this link: http://www.mobot.org/mobot/research/apweb/

Finally, this is the citation for the APG III paper we used to put our families in our chosen order. Table 1 was especially helpful: Haston, E., Richardson, J.E., Stevens, P.F., Chase, M.W., and D.J. Harris. (2009). A linear sequence of the families in APG III. The Linnean Society of London. Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 161: p. 128-131.

Sascha will be writing a blog soon detailing our exact methodology as we reorganized.

Despite our milestones, the work is not yet done! We still must digitize the entire Herbarium (~28,000 specimens). Our goal is to do so by the end of the summer...but looking at what we have accomplished in one semester (10 hours a week per person), I really think we can do it!

Until next time,

Abigail H.