KSN/KODE — A local herbarium hit a milestone yesterday with plant specimens.
Pittsburg State’s Sperry Herbarium, which has been collecting data from plant specimens since 1946, mounted and recorded its 50,000th specimen.
The specimen was a boechera lasiocarpa – also called a “rock-cress,” was found by PSU Graduate Student Michael Daines.
While this species of plant has only ever been recorded in Utah, the specimen recorded today was collected in Idaho, making it the *only specimen of rock-cress found in that state.
“It’s cool, it’s cool, it’s defiantly an honor. It’s a pretty big milestone. Like I said for a small to medium place like this, it’s a pretty big herbarium,” he said. “There’s some herbariums that have a lot more. Some larger institutions have done their millionth specimen milestone but this is kind of a comparable thing for a little place like this.”
That’s 50,000 specimens out of the 400,000 species of plants on the earth.
