Facilities
Shirley C. Tucker Herbarium (LSU & NO)
This is the founding collection and includes LSU and Tulane University herbaria collections. It holds the specimens for vascular plants, bryophytes, algae, and lichens. The lichen collection is notably the largest in the Gulf South. Most specimens are from Louisiana and neighboring states, but comparative flora from all over the continental United States are represented. Further geographic scope includes, but is not limited to, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Canada, Costa Rica, Peru and New Zealand.
The 6,000 ft.2 herbarium complex is suited to hold 600,000 specimens in compactorized cabinets. Additional cabinets throughout the herbarium are used for storing loans and processing materials. The facility also includes three research carrels, a spacious workroom, three offices for staff and graduate students, and an attached library. Our large drier oven and chest freezer (-30°C ) insures the use of herbarium's best practices.
Bernard Lowy Mycological Herbarium (LSUM)
This collection holds the specimens for all fungi besides lichens.
This is the primary repository for Bernard Lowy's Neotropical wood-decaying fungi containing nearly 50 of his type specimens from several Fulbright funded expeditions. More regional specimens include some later collections of Aurthur Welden of Tulane University, while the original Tulane Fungarium was transferred to New York Botanic Garden in 2000.
Fossil and spirit collection
These collections are mostly for educational purposes, and include flowers of orchids in ethanol "spirit", leaf imprints, and fossilized trunk pieces.
Clair Brown Memorial Library & Special Collections
Our library contains volumes that cover the flora of different areas in North America, synopses and taxonomic treatments of botanical families, textbooks, and regional maps. It also holds issues of Phytologia, Mycotaxon, The American Journal of Botany, among many others.
Original contributions to the library collection were donated by Clair Brown, Bernard Lowy, Shirley Tucker, Samuel Meyers, Meredith Blackwell, and Florence Givens. A full set of Clair Brown's field notebooks are held in the collection. The herbarium library is complemented by important botanical works in the Main Library, including many rare works in LSU Libraries Special Collections housed on campus in Hill Memorial Library.
A pride of the herbarium are botanical illustrations of Margaret Stones housed in the Hill Memorial Library and occasionally on display. Commissioned by LSU in 1986 and completed over roughly ten years, Native Flora of Louisiana is a series of watercolor drawings by the internationally known botanical artist Margaret Stones is one of LSU's treasures. This work was supported by many local Louisianians and carried out in conjunction with herbarium personnel. Specimens collected for the project are housed in the herbarium.