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Freshman Danielle Hacker and Collections Manager Kim Kersh at Cal Day 2006 - Photo credit: Peg Skorpinski (click for News item)
Girl with carnivorous plant - Cal Day 2006 (click for News item) Moss - Polytrichum sp. - Photo credit: Eric Harris (click for personal page) Flowering plant - Eriogonum truncatum - Photo credit: Scott Hein of Save Mount Diablo (click for News item) Alga - Antithamnion cruciatum - Photo credit: Athanasios Athanasiadis (click for publication in Constancea) Flowering plant - Madia elegans "densifolia" - Photo credit: Bruce G. Baldwin (click for Baldwin Lab) Flowering plant - Allium crispum - Photo credit: John Game (click for John Game's photographs) Plant display and lecturer - Cal Day 2006 (click for News item) Moss - Sphagnum mendocinum - Photo credit: John Game (click for BryoLab)
Welcome to the Herbaria
The University and Jepson Herbaria of the University of California at Berkeley are two collections of pressed plants housed together along with research labs, libraries, and archives. Together the Herbaria hold about 2,200,000 specimens, one of the largest collections in North America.
 •The University Herbarium, established in 1895, holds botanical collections from around the world.
 •The Jepson Herbarium, established in 1950, specializes in the vascular plants of California.
News from the Herbaria

Herbarium data used to project the effects of climate change. 

David Ackerly, Curator of Ecology at UC/JEPS and Professor of Integrative Biology, was the leader of a team that analyzed current distributions of over 2,000 California endemic plants based on data from the Consortium of California Herbaria and the Jepson Flora Project.  The team projected these distributions into the future under various climate change models, and discovered that many of these species are in great danger unless they can move to new localities with appropriate climate.

Read the original scientific publication

Learn more about this study in recent media:

UC Berkeley News Release KGO ABC News Story San Francisco Chronicle Story
ScienceNews Article KTVU Fox News Story LA Times Story

David Gowen discovers two new wildflower species near Mount Diablo.

The Lime Ridge Navarretia (Navarretia gowenii) and the Lime Ridge Woollystar (Eriastrum sp. nov.) were discovered on East Bay public lands in an area that has been studied by botanists for 150 years. Outdoor enthusiast, retired carpenter, and UC/JEPS volunteer David Gowen was encouraged by the Jepson Herbarium's Barbara Ertter to persist in his search for rare and new species in the region. The California Native Plant Society, Save Mount Diablo, and the Walnut Creek Open Space Foundation are working together on a conservation plan.

Read more about citizen science and the new discoveries

SO BE FREE 14 ----coming up March 24-27, 2009

The 2009 SO BE FREE will be held in the lower elevations of the central Sierra Nevada, near Oakhurst, California. The area offers montane coniferous forest, oak woodland with rocky outcrops, chaparral, and deep gorges cut into the granite by swiftly flowing waters. We will also visit a giant sequoia grove and a foothill woodland. Bryophyte diversity will span a range of life strategies, from California's spring ephemerals to the brown mosses of continuously wet sites. Beginning bryologists are welcome; we are planning some special activities for beginners, as well as serious field trips that will be exciting for the hard-core.

 

sobefree

 
Founded in 1996, SO BE FREE is a series of West Coast forays focusing on bryophytes, but open to all botanical interests and levels of experience. This year's event is organized by Brent Mishler, Paul Wilson, and Jim Shevock. Registration due by December 15, 2008. Get more information.
More news...
Featured Projects
 
The Jepson Manual

The primary focus of Jepson Flora Project is a five-year initiative (2003–2008) to produce a scientifically revised Jepson Manual. The Second Edition will provide revised treatments for all taxa in the 1993 edition of the Manual and include new treatments for taxa that have been added to the flora of the state since 1993. Read more...

   
Consortium of California Herbaria

The Consortium of California Herbaria serves as a gateway to information from California vascular plant specimens that are housed in herbaria throughout the state. The database now includes information from nearly 900,000 specimens, all searchable through a single interface. Read more...

   
CalEON The California Ecological Observatory Network (CalEON) is a regional network of field sites, natural history museums, and university labs. CalEON is dedicated to facilitating a cutting-edge network of ecological measurement and observation systems, connected via informatics with data from museum collections and laboratory studies ranging from taxonomy through physiology and genomics. Read more...
   
Green Tree of Life

The objective of the Green Tree of Life project is to resolve the primary pattern of evolutionary diversification among green plants and establish a model for doing so that will be applicable to other groups of organisms with long evolutionary histories. Read more...

   
Baldwin Lab

Evolutionary and systematic studies of Californian vascular plants are a major research focus of the Baldwin Lab in the Jepson Herbarium, where investigations of the highly diverse native tarweeds and their Hawaiian-silversword descendants continue apace. Read more...

 
 
Berkeley Natural History Museums   The University and Jepson Herbaria are part of the Berkeley Natural History Museum Consortium.
 
Picea breweriana, Trinity Alps, California - Photo credit: John Game