Plant Conservation
Regional Floristics
In order to conserve plant species, it is necessary to identify the plants that exist in a region and know where rare species are located. Taxonomy is fundamental to all other research efforts.
Herbarium
The Chicago Botanic Garden’s Nancy Poole Rich Herbarium is a reference collection of preserved plants for:
- Scientific research, such as describing a new plant species, comparing unidentified plants against known species, or determining the variability between closely and distantly related plants.
- Educational purposes such as training staff and volunteers in the identification of native plants, and for courses in plant taxonomy and morphology.
- Exchange between museums, gardens and universities to support the research projects at other institutions.
The Garden’s herbarium has the capacity to house 33,000 herbarium specimens. Currently it houses about 12,000 specimens. This includes specimens from:
- The Flora of Cook County Collection
- Regional flora of the Upper Midwest
- Plant exploration trips to Russia, Korea and China
- Horticultural and native plants in the Garden’s living collections
- Research projects
- A teaching collection of representative families and genera
With funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Garden, in partnership with The Morton Arboretum and the Field Museum of Natural History, is working to make its herbarium database and images of representative specimens available on the Web. The project, called "vPlants: The Chicago Regional Virtual Herbarium," will be finished in 2002.
Rare Plant Monitoring
Garden staff are also involved in locating, mapping and monitoring rare plant species in the Chicago area. With funding from Chicago Wilderness, the Garden is leading an effort to develop a regional volunteer rare plant monitoring program. This effort dovetails with that of the National Audubon Society of the Chicago Region’s "Habitat Project" to develop volunteer monitoring programs for several other taxonomic groups.
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