Herbarium Digitization at Sonoma State University

More than a year ago, the Milo Baker Chapter in partnership with local herbaria, began the quest to digitize Sonoma County plant collections. After a group tour of the huge collection at California Academy, followed by a steep learning curve to understand digitization and plant specimen, the project is now off the ground. Sonoma County is home to several small collections. Milo Baker was an avid collector in the 1930’s, traveling widely in California to find examples of native plants. His, and other historic collections now resting in big metal cabinets, are important for future research as climate changes affect bloom times and locations. Making available data on these 25,000 specimens globally is the goal.

Our focus is on preparing to photograph the dried plants at Sonoma State University. On a warm summer day, Dr. Richard Whitkus, SSU Herbarium (NCC) curator, hosted a workshop to understand the protocols of checking the dried plants for condition, insect damage and name changes. We now have a total of 6 regular volunteers preprocessing every week. One set back was when insect damage was discovered, so everything in that cabinet had to be frozen for at least 48 hours. Each cabinet is thoroughly cleaned, and a new seal is installed. Currently we are working through the Asteraceae with many cabinets to go.

Dr. Whitkus has been our leader with Lynnette Bower managing the day-to-day work. Dr. Whitkus has pulled together a light box and is fine tuning the protocol for imaging. We hope to get started with uploading photographs and adding the plant data this fall. The goal is to have all the plant information available on the data portal CCH2 (CCH2.org) along with the image for each specimen.

This work is speeding ahead thanks to our wonderful volunteers, Wendy Born, Claire Green, Nate Curry and Jim Allen. We also hope to recruit students to help out this semester. The Chapter has generously budgeted funds to support this work. In addition, private donations to SSU ensure the viability of this long-term project. Future plans are to extend the work to the other small herbaria at SRJC and Pepperwood Preserve. All are welcome to join our efforts.