About the Purdue Herbaria
A herbarium is a collection of preserved botanical specimens and associated reference materials including scientific correspondence, books, maps, and metadata on land use, ecology, and species distributions through space and time. There are two herbaria at Purdue that contain an unparalleled collection of resources documenting early scientific achievement in Indiana that have not been used to their full capacity in the past. The Kriebel Herbarium alone holds more than 90,000 plant specimens including the recently bequeathed vascular plant collection of the Indiana-based Eli Lilly & Co.
The Arthur Fungarium and the Kriebel Herbarium are housed within the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology in the Lilly Hall of Life Sciences at Purdue University (Room G-447). The Arthur Fungarium (PUR) specializes in collections of the Pucciniales, or rust fungi (formerly the Uredinales), while the Kriebel Herbarium (PUL) contains non-rust fungi, vascular plants, lichens, algae and bryophytes. We have over 200,000 specimens across both collections dating as far back as 1769.
The Arthur Fungarium was established in 1887 by Dr. Joseph C. Arthur, a pioneer American plant pathologist and mycologist. The fungarium is considered one of the most important collections of rust fungi in the world with almost 110,000 specimens collected from a across a broad geographic distribution and historical time line. Past Directors, J. C. Arthur (1187–1915), George B. Cummins (1938–1971), and Joe F. Hennen (1971–1995), are known the world over as leading scientists in the field of Urediniology (the study of rust fungi).
The Kriebel Herbarium contains the oldest vascular plant collection in the state of Indiana and has been in existence since the very inception of the university. As Purdue opened its doors for the first time in 1874, only six professors had been hired to teach. One was John Hussey (1831–1888), a botany professor. He brought his personal plant collection as a teaching aid for his students, and Hussey’s specimens are still in the Kriebel Herbarium to this day. The Herbarium itself is named in honor of Ralph M. Kriebel (1897–1946), a botanist who joined Purdue in 1943 and whose own collection is in excess of 10,000 specimens of important Indiana flora.
The Correspondence Collection
In early 2015, digitization of the historical correspondence collection of the Purdue University Herbaria was completed, and upload of content into the Purdue University Libraries Archives and Special Collections online repository is ongoing. Researchers may access, view, and search the growing collection of correspondence materials by visiting e-Archives.
The correspondence collection includes many letters between prominent mycologists and botanists discussing the Herbaria at Purdue as well as matters concerning the Botany and Plant Pathology Department. An interesting read is J. C. Arthur’s “Why a Botanist?” where he details the events leading to his career in botany.
To learn more about the Purdue Herbaria, please visit their website at https://ag.purdue.edu/btny/Herbaria/Pages/default.aspx.
If you would like to contact the Purdue Herbaria do so at herbaria@purdue.edu.