The E.L. Reed Herbarium at Texas Tech held a birthday party recognizing its donors and celebrating a century of operation on Friday, Sept. 25.
Although the 100th year was 2025, the herbarium pushed the celebration date back due to scheduling conflicts.
The herbarium is an archive for dried, pressed plants that houses over 31,000 recorded specimens, according to its website.
It is also the official repository for the Guadalupe Mountains National Park, with over 3,000 specimens from the park, according to herbarium director, Dr. Matt Johnson.
“The herbarium was originally established at Texas Tech college in the 1920s,” Johnson said. “It was in the sciences building for the first 40 years or so. Then it moved to biological sciences when that building was built-in the 1960s. Then when the new greenhouses were built in the 1990s... The herbarium took over the roof.”
Visitors were given one free raffle ticket at the door to win gift certificates to various places as well as a chance to win a herbarium specimen canvas print with a donation of $100 or more.
Grad students taught attendees how to mount pressed plant specimens at an "arts and crafts" table while Johnson spoke to guests about what the herbarium does.
"Happy birthday" hung from the ceiling and a cake was cut at noon, where Johnson and former interim Director Dr. Dylan Schwilk were given awards by the student organization, the West Texas Association for Botany, for their contributions to the Herbarium.
"The primary use of a herbarium is for plant taxonomy and biodiversity," Johnson said.
The herbarium is used to record the plants in a given area. Johnson explained that it shows what species are there and how things change over time.
"Our herbarium here is a really good record of the plants of West Texas, Eastern New Mexico, the Guadalupe Mountains and so forth," Johnson said. "It's an important regional resource for studying plant biodiversity."
Groups interested in volunteering at the herbarium can contact Johnson at matt.johnson@ttu.edu