A baseline for monitoring extinction in the Anthropocene. Jepson Curator Bruce Baldwin and UC/JEPS Director Brent Mishler contributed to an analysis documenting which plants in North America have already gone extinct. Available data suggest 65 vascular plant taxa from this region have become extinct since European settlement, 19 from California alone (thumbnail shows one of them, Calochortus monanthus, the only specimen ever collected, in 1876). Read the open source paper here, and New York Times article here.

Mosses can hide under rocks in the desert! Jenna Ekwealor, a graduate student in the Mishler Lab, along with alumna Kirsten Fisher, made this fascinating and unique discovery while studying how mosses are able to live and reproduce in dry deserts. See university news article here, New York Times article here, NPR radio interview here, and the research paper here.

April 10, 2020

Faculty curator Noah Whiteman was just named a Guggenheim Fellow. Noah works on a diverse set of topics involving plant-animal coevolution. Please see the news story here: https://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/Noah-Whiteman/ and Noah’s Lab website here: http://www.noahwhiteman.org/

The 2020 schedule for Jepson Herbarium Workshops is now available! There are educational opportunities for a broad audience of professional and amateur botanists. The weekend workshop program is celebrating its 27th season and will offer courses in basic botany, plant taxonomy, regional floras, ecology, and more! For the full slate of workshops, and to enroll, please see: https://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/workshops

UC/JEPS alum Ekaphan (“Bier") Kraichak received this year's “Young Scientist Award” in Thailand. It is given annually to outstanding scientists under the age of 35, and was presented by Princess Sirindhorn herself. Bier received his PhD from UC Berkeley in 2012, studying evolutionary ecology of liverworts in Brent Mishler’s lab, and is now an assistant professor in Botany at Kasetsart University in Bangkok, Thailand.

UC/JEPS faculty, staff, and students played a major role in the recently concluded Botany 2019 meeting. The most exciting news is that three graduate students were recognized for best student talks in three different sections: Isaac Marck won the George R. Cooley Award, Joyce Chery won the Katherine Esau Award, and Jenna Ekwealor received Honorable Mention for the A.J. Sharp Award. See our Facebook page for more details.

Join BigGive by making a gift to support undergraduate students working at the University and Jepson Herbaria. Here, they will gain valuable skills in botany and conservation biology while helping us document biodiversity and share data with the world. https://crowdfund.berkeley.edu/project/14463.

A new study has been published by a UC/JEPS team evaluating conservation priorities across California from several different evolutionary standpoints, to guide land conservation efforts. Read the campus news story here and here, and explore the data and methods in an interactive web link here.

The Jepson eFlora Revision 6 was published in September 2018! One of the new species included is Erythranthe shevockii (photo by John Game). For the full details, please see the summary here: https://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/eflora/supplement_summary.html

The University and Jepson Herbaria recently completed a NPS funded project to database and image over 1000 specimens collected by John Muir and housed at the John Muir National Historic Site in Martinez, California. Specimens were collected in Canada and Indiana in 1864-1867 and on his world tour in 1903-1904. Many of the specimens were in poor condition and were carefully remounted by plant mounter extraordinaire, Ana Penny. The Muir specimens are accessible via our Specimen Portal: https://webapps.cspace.berkeley.edu/ucjeps/publicsearch/publicsearch/

The University and Jepson Herbaria collaborated on an exhibit entitled Sustaining Grandeur: The First 100 Years of Save the Redwoods League, on display in the Bancroft Gallery in Doe Annex, April through August, 2018 (10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday).
For details on assembling the exhibit, which includes specimens and archival material from the Herbaria, please see: http://news.lib.berkeley.edu/sustaining-grandeur

The Jepson eFlora Revision 5 was published in December 2017! One of the new species included is Vaccinium shastense (photo by Steve Matson).
For the full details, please see the summary here: https://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/eflora/supplement_summary.html

A second paper has been published by the same UC/JEPS team referenced in a previous news item on this page (April 11, 2017), adding phylogenetic methods to the study of diversity and endemism in the California flora. This novel "spatial phylogenetics" approach makes it possible to evaluate biodiversity from an evolutionary standpoint, including discovering significant areas of neo- and paleo-endemism. Read the campus news story here and the open-source paper here.

Ingrid Jordon-Thaden, the lab manager for Assistant Professor/Curator Carl Rothfels of Integrative Biology and University and Jepson Herbaria, has been featured in a news article for UC Berkeley Research-IT (RIT).

We are sad to announce that UC/JEPS Researcher Daniel Norris passed away September 30, 2017. Dan was an internationally famous bryologist, as well as a mentor for many students and colleagues in bryology. He is greatly missed here, and around the world.
... Read more here

New study published by a UC/JEPS team uses specimen-based distributional data, diversity metrics that include species’ relative breadth of range, and a randomization test, to map biodiversity and endemism for California native vascular plants. Download the PDF of full paper here.

UC/JEPS graduate students Joyce Chery and Carrie Tribble star in a two-part series telling the story of herbaria, including how to make plant collections, how they are curated, and how they are used in research, as part of the Science in Real Life series.
Plant Collecting & Herbarium Research ... Part 1.
Plant Collecting & Herbarium Research ... Part 2.

The Jepson eFlora Revision 4 was published in December 2016! One of the new species included is Adiantum shastense (photo by Julie Kierstead Nelson).
For the full details, please see the summary here: https://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/eflora/supplement_summary.html

UC/JEPS Researcher Benito Ching Tan has died. He was an internationally famous bryologist, as well as a helpful colleague and mentor for California botanists. We will miss him greatly. ... Read more here...

University and Jepson Herbaria researchers Andrew Thornhill and Brent Mishler, as part of an international team, have published a major study using phylogenetic methods to model the effects of climate change on the eucalypts, Australia’s most dominant and widespread trees. ... Read more here.

Jepson Curator Bruce Baldwin receives the Robert Allerton Award for Excellence in Tropical Botany, from the National Tropical Botanical Garden, for his work on the origins of the Hawaiian flora.

SO BE FREE 22 to be held March 27 - 30, 2017, in the lower elevations of the Sierra Nevada, near Sequoia National Park. Participants will see a variety of spectacular habitats that are very rich in bryophytes, including the foothills where the valley fog hits the rock outcrops and oak savannahs. The geology includes marble as well as granitics. Depending on snowpack, we may be able to go to the giant sequoia forests. Registration Deadline is Dec. 15, 2016.

The California Native Plant Society released CalScape, a resource for native plant gardeners built in collaboration with the Jepson Herbarium. ... Read more from Berkeley News

Joyce Chery, a National Science Foundation Fellow and a graduate student in the lab of UC/JEPS Curator of Monocots Chelsea Specht, is a semi-finalist in the Grad Slam, a UC-sponsored competitive speaking event designed to showcase the best research presentations given by UC graduate students. Here is a short video clip from her presentation

New feature added to the Jepson eFlora: dichotomous keys filtered to bioregions. ... Try them here

Altitudinal shifts of the flora of California, in the context of climate warming, were studied in a major new paper featuring data from the Consortium of California Herbaria ... See news coverage from Climate Central and The Atlantic

An article describing the value of the Consortium of California Herbaria (CCH) was published in Fremontia, the Journal of the California Native Plant Society. ... Full article available here

"A successful example of advancing an herbarium with coordinated development in the strengths of both science and public programs is the University and Jepson Herbaria of the University of California, Berkeley. Their active research is complemented by the major role they play in the Consortium of California Herbaria. They have helped pioneer data portal development and eFlora projects, and have an active public education program. In addition the molecular lab and the herbarium are well integrated and are incorporated in the plans for the future. Such examples should be sought out and highlighted by the systematics community."

Quote from Wen et al. 2015.

The Jepson eFlora Revision 3 is posted! It includes seven newly-described taxa native to California, including Linanthus bernardinus (photo by Duncan Bell). For the full details, please see the summary here: https://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/eflora/supplement_summary.html

Registration now open to all for 2016 workshops! See the schedule here

KQED public television releases a video and story about conifer reproduction, featuring Jepson Curator Bruce Baldwin.

Curators Chelsea Specht (pictured here) and Paul Fine named Fellows of the California Academy of Sciences, joining a number of University and Jepson Herbaria curators who are already Fellows: David Ackerly, Bruce Baldwin, Tom Bruns, Kathy Ann Miller, Brent Mishler, Richard Moe, Dan Norris, Ellen Simms, Alan Smith, John Strother, Ben Tan, and John Taylor. ... Read more

Citizen science training workshop for the NSF-funded California Phylodiversity Project was held in conjunction with the California Native Plant Society's Rare Plant Treasure Hunt, at the McLaughlin Reserve

University Herbarium receives major grant to support digitizing of microfungal collections, as part of a nationwide consortium. ... Read more

The 2016 SO BE FREE foray will be held March 18-21, 2016, in North Coast Range near Occidental, California, approximately 1.5 hours north of San Francisco. Participants will see a variety of habitats ranging from coastal prairie, coast redwood forest, live oak woodland, serpentine chaparral, and chaparral scrub. Registration details here.

KQED public television releases a video and story about desiccation-tolerant mosses, featuring the Mishler Lab. See: http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2015/06/25/these-resurrection-plants-spring-back-to-life-in-seconds/

The Consortium of California Herbaria (CCH) now serving data from 2 million specimens! ... Read more

New species of mushroom discovered right on the Berkeley campus by UC Research Associate Else Vellinga, in relation to the North American Mycoflora Project. ... Read more

David Baxter, UC/JEPS Biodiversity Informatics Manager, coauthored a recent study on trends in usage of plant biodiversity websites, which included the Jepson eFlora and the Consortium of California Herbaria. Google Analytics reveals that these California-specific resources are frequently accessed by users all over the world, and are increasingly popular on mobile platforms.

Richard G. Beidleman
June 3, 1923 — August 7, 2014
We are mourning the loss of Research Associate Dick Beidleman, who was a devoted archivist and workshop instructor. Dr. Beidleman taught at the University of Colorado, Colorado State University, and Colorado College. He co-authored Plants of Rocky Mountain National Park, and his most recent book was California's Frontier Naturalists (University of California Press). We will miss his warmth, wisdom, and humor. His obituary is in the Pacific Grove Cedar Street Times.

Alan Smith was awarded the prestigious Asa Gray Award by the American Society of Plant Taxonomists at its July 2014 annual meeting, "for outstanding accomplishments pertinent to the goals of the Society." Dr. Smith has been curator of ferns in the University Herbarium at UC Berkeley for his whole career and was lauded for both his outstanding contributions to fern floristics and phylogenetic systematics, as well as for developing one of the most important and well-curated fern herbaria in the world.

Research team led by UC/JEPS Director Brent Mishler has just published a major paper presenting new quantitative methods for looking at patterns of phylogenetic diversity and endemism on the landscape using collection data.

The paper is available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms5473.

The University and Jepson Herbaria has a new specimen search portal, providing access to databased records of herbarium specimens of all plant and fungal taxa from all over the world ... Try it out

The 2015 SO BE FREE foray will be held March 27-30, 2015, in the San Bernardino Mountains of Southern California, approximately 2 hours east of L.A. and 4 hours south of Las Vegas. Participants will see a variety of habitats ranging from cismontane chaparral, oak woodland, riparian wash, conifer woodland, and transmontane high desert.

Paul Claude Silva
October 31 1922 — June 12 2014
Curator of Algae, University Herbarium, University of California, Berkeley
Phycology, biological nomenclature, the California flora, UC/JEPS, and numerous political, social, and cultural causes lost a devoted friend when Paul Silva died after a several-year illness. Paul's diligence and enthusiasm have affected all of us. We will feel his loss for a long time to come.

New book on California lichens by research associate Stephen Sharnoff, with gorgeous photos, was just published. Available from Yale University Press.

New NSF grant to study California plant biodiversity and endemism in a phylogenetic context, received by Brent Mishler, Bruce Baldwin, and David Ackerly, will apply novel phylogenetic methods to better understand the distribution of plant diversity across both space and time in California. This new project takes advantage of the rapidly expanding Consortium of California Herbaria, the constantly updated Jepson eFlora for California, and the wealth of phylogenetic studies that have accumulated. A comprehensive phylogeny for California plants will be built, in part using newly generated molecular data generated from fresh material gathered via an innovative collaboration with citizen scientists from the California Native Plant Society ... Read More

A new eFlora project on California Seaweeds has been funded by a three year grant from the Packard Foundation to UC Curator of Algae Kathy Ann Miller and Director Brent Mishler. This online flora will update Abbott & Hollenberg's Marine Algae of California (1976) and provide a portal for students, ecologists, managers, and the public who wish to learn more about our 750 seaweed species. ... Read more

The Daily Cal's photographic profile of Integrative Biology 157, "California Ecosystems", taught by UC/JEPS Curator of Neotropical Flora, Paul Fine. ... Read more

The 2014 SO BE FREE foray was held March 28-31, 2014, in the Santa Cruz Mountains approximately 1.5 hours south of San Francisco. More than 50 participants visited a region rich in limestone and marble, as well as marine sandstone deposits, supporting a number of rare endemic bryophytes. Habitats seen included coastal prairie, coast redwood forest, live oak forest, and chaparral scrub.

Herbaria Research Associate Ingrid Jordon-Thaden is honored twice this summer, awarded with the Margaret Menzel Award for her presentation at the Botany2013 conference, as well as the NERDS Outstanding Mentor Award.

UC awarded a major NSF grant to complete digitizing the macroalgal collection.

Director Brent Mishler will spend the month of August 2013 in Australia, as a Murray-Darling Basin Futures Visiting Fellow at the University of Canberra, where he will collaborate with resident researchers in applying phylogenetic approaches to conservation efforts in this region. He will also be leading a workshop in this area of study.

Annotated Checklist of the East Bay Flora
UC/JEPS Curator of Western North American Flora Barbara Ertter and restoration ecologist, botanist, and photographer Lech Naumovich have published a new edition of the Annotated Checklist of the East Bay Flora, incorporating a wealth of new information.

$4M grant from USDA awarded to the University and Jepson Herbaria for a project under the direction of Jennifer Sowerwine to work with tribal groups in the Klamath Basin in Oregon and California to build sustainable regional food systems and enhance tribal health and food security.

The Jepson Globe, 2003 to 2012, is now available as online PDFs ... Read them all.

Brent Mishler presented an invited keynote address on the topic of "A new era for natural history collections: the impact of digitization and phylogenetics on analysis of biodiversity data," at the Australasian Systematic Botany Society Conference 2012, 23-28 September 2012, in Perth, Western Australia ... Read the abstract

Named for orchidologist Donald Dod, who collected the specimen in Haiti in the 1980s, and who served, in his later years, as a research associate here at the UC Herbarium. Dod died in 2008, at 95.

A living specimen of the new species is blooming at the UC Botanical Garden, and has showy, flame-orange flowers. Photo by James Gaither.

The holotype specimen (right) is housed at the University Herbarium.

See the UC Berkeley news article about the discovery!

This funding will support collaboration in biodiversity informatics with a consortium of Canadian herbaria, natural history museums and botanical gardens. The first meeting of the new consortium will be in Berkeley March 13 and 14.

Eric Harris, recent Ph.D. from the Mishler Lab in the Herbaria, received the 2009 William Starling Sullivant Award from the American Bryological and Lichenological Society for best paper published in the previous volume of The Bryologist. The article is entitled "Ethnobryology: traditional uses and folk classification of bryophytes."

You can read the paper in The Bryologist 111(2), pp. 169-217. 2008.