The
Pringle Herbarium, a facility of The Plant
Biology Department at the University of Vermont,
is a fully functional collection of dried plants. It
is currently active as a resource for systematic and
floristics research on a regional and international
basis. The large collection is fortunately housed in
a stable facility in Torrey Hall. Facilities at
Torrey Hall include space for collections, as well
as work and study space for staff, students and
visiting scientists.
The
Herbarium is fortunate to have strong associate
libraries, the Pringle Library and the Tryon
Pteridophyte Library, specializing in systematics
and floristics, with an emphasis on ferns. Major
recent donations bring the library to some 1,500
volumes. The library facility includes seminar and
study space for herbarium-related activities.
The
collection currently includes over 300,000 sheets of
mounted and accessioned plants; it is the third
largest herbarium in New England. Central to the
herbarium are the extensive Mexican collections of
its namesake, Cyrus G. Pringle (1838-1911).
Pringle's aggressive exchange program with a suite
of approximately two dozen international and
national herbaria between 1885 & 1911 brought a
large geographically and taxonomically diverse
representation of the world's flora to the
herbarium. Pringle's unusually rich exchange
materials, including many isotypes from his
pioneering explorations in northern Latin America
and southwestern United States, led exchange
partners to send unusually choice materials, for
example the set of Sellow collections sent from
Berlin's herbarium, representing the beginning of
Europe's exploration of Brazil.
The herbarium is naturally the definitive repository for the flora of Vermont, including the largest Vermont flora collection in the world. Vermont's climatic and edaphic diversity has interested a community of plant floristicians and collectors for well over a century; the herbarium houses all of the major collections from the state, including the notable early herbaria of Penniman (ca. 1815) and Joseph Torrey, botanist and past president of this University (1840s). Recent activity has expanded the older collections of Pringle and others to build an extensive representation of the North American flora, and the institution has significant collections representing every continent except Antarctica. Currently we have an exchange program with 18 herbaria worldwide, and loans continue on an average of 7.6 loans of 359 specimens per year to herbaria across the United States and around the world.
The
University of Vermont and its College of Agriculture
and Life Sciences recognize the Pringle Herbarium as
a critical resource for research activity in
systematics and plant diversity studies. It serves
as both a center for systematic and floristic
research at the University and as a frequently used
resource for visitors and correspondents. Two
practicing plant systematists are housed at the
herbarium: Dave Barrington and Michael Sundue. In
addition, one of the foremost floristicians in the
state, Elizabeth Thompson, is housed here. Two
graduate students in the Barrington lab also reside
at the collection site in Torrey Hall. Interest from
the plant systematics community largely centers on
the two major emphases of the collections: northern
Latin America and Vermont. We have
a record of extensive loan activity and visitation
from specialists in floristics and systematics of
Neotropical, especially Mexican and Brazilian
groups. This interest stems from the critical early
holdings in the collection, especially type
materials and archival holdings of Pringle and other
Neotropical collectors. The current director's emphasis on
and research cooperation with Latin American
herbaria derives from this early emphasis of
Pringle's.