Oral Paper

         Education and Outreach

The Leo A. Galloway Herbarium at Missouri Western State University- showcasing floral specimens from North West Missouri and adjacent areas to build an educational and research tool

Presenting Author
Tilottama Roy
Description
An herbarium is a critical resource for biodiversity, and ecological and evolutionary research studies. The Leo A. Galloway herbarium housed in the biology department at Missouri Western is comprised of dried, preserved and annotated specimens of over 3000 valuable plant species, particularly native to the mid-western United States. The herbarium collection is maintained and stored in Agenstein Hall in the biological sciences department. Dr. Leo A. Galloway, a former biology faculty, was a plant taxonomist and he worked on the genus Abronia, which belong to the Nyctaginaceae family. Dr. Galloway established the herbarium in 1972 and most of the specimens in the herbarium were collected by him. Most of the Leo A. Galloway Herbarium collections are from the midwestern United States, specifically northwest Missouri. So far, we have catalogued more than 10 gymnosperm families, 13 monocot families and more than 65 eudicot families in our herbarium (~ 1500 herbarium specimens), to complete work on the entire collection comprising of approximately 3000 plant specimens, housed within it. Our goal is to continue working on cataloging, databasing and circumscribing the taxonomical definitions of the remaining ~1500 specimens in our herbarium, to be indexed into the Index Herbarium, maintained by the New York Botanical Garden’s William and Lynda Steere Herbarium. Future plans involve collaborative initiatives towards digitizing the specimens, and building a website showcasing the entire collection, with a link to access it virtually through Missouri Western’s biology department’s website. In a world of virtual research and learning, this will prove to be immensely valuable.