Milwaukee Public Museum

by Neil Luebke

This article is reprinted from LORE magazine, a benefit of museum membership. ©1996 Milwaukee Public Museum, Inc.

The Milwaukee Public Museum's plant collections are among the oldest in the United States. Their beginning dates back to the early 1850s with the founding of the German-English Academy. Along with other objects gathered during class excursions to the environs of the new town Milwaukee, plants were preserved and used in the study of nature. These collections grew and in 1857 they were placed under the care of the newly formed Wisconsin Natural History Society. During this period many European plant specimens, especially from Germany, were added to the collections by businessmen and clergy who travelled between the two continents. In 1883 the Society's plant collections which totalled over 5,000 specimens were donated to the new museum. Over the intervening years many plant specimens taken from locations around the world have been added to these early collections. Today the Museum's holdings have grown to over 200,000 plant specimens.

The Museum's plant collections are organized and stored in a room called a herbarium. The word herbarium also applies to a collection of dried plant specimens that have been affixed to paper to form a lasting record. The practice of preserving plants on paper began in the sixteenth century in Europe where some of the oldest herbaria can be found. Many of these early collections were bound into books. Today they are more commonly kept as separate sheets. The practice of keeping herbaria has also shifted over time from privately owned collections to herbaria maintained by institutions such as museums, universities, and botanical gardens.

Herbaria are storehouses of huge quantities of data. They provide a reference for the plant taxonomist, a scientist who names, describes, and classifies plants. It is the work of the taxonomist to recognize plants according to an established system of names and to assign names to newly discovered plant species based on their similarities to others. Once identified, specimens serve as references in determining unnamed plants or for comparison to confirm identifications.

In addition to the name of the plant, labels accompanying each specimen record where, when, and by whom the plant was collected. Where a species grows can be used to determine distribution patterns and to compile checklists of plants found in a given region. Habitat information and associated species allows one to group plants according to required growing conditions. This information is used in the restoration of degraded landscapes and to define habitats based on the species present on a site. Information from old specimens can be used in reconstructing the vegetation and conditions of an area long since altered. Therefore, it can be seen that herbaria serve as a resource not only for the professional botanist, but also for the forester, wildlife manager, landscaper, and gardener.

For botanical collections to be useful, the specimens must be organized in a manner that facilitates easy retrieval. The Museum's plant collections are grouped according to plant types. Algae, fungi, lichens, liverworts and mosses, ferns and fern-allies, conifers, and flowering plants are each kept as distinct collections. The flowering plants are filed alphabetically by family, within each family by genus, and within each genus by species. The rest of the collections are filed either alphabetically by genus, and within each genus by species, or in an order that reflects their evolutionary relationships. All specimens are filed according to geographical regions using color-coded folders or cards.

The Museum's herbarium is predominantly a local herbarium. As such, over fifty percent of our collections are from Wisconsin. We also approach being a regional herbarium in that approximately another thirty percent of the specimens are from elsewhere in North America. This portion of the collections is pretty much evenly distributed across the North American continent. The remaining twenty percent of the herbarium represents the rest of the world with special collections from South America and Africa.

The collections in the herbarium reflect the interests of many individuals. Current staff continue to add specimens representing personal research interests and to build weak areas of the collections. Important past contributions to the collections include those of Albert M. Fuller, H.E. Hayward, Emil P. Kruschke, Charles Monroe, C.A. Purpus, and Huron H. Smith. Each of these special collections document a portion of the flora in greater depth. Three of these are recognized internationally: Emil P. Kruschke's Hawthorns (Crataegus) of the Upper Midwest, Albert M. Fuller's Blackberries (Rubus) of Eastern North America, and Huron H. Smith's Ethnobotanical Collection of Wisconsin Indians.

An example of a special collection and its current significance is Smith's Ethnobotanical Collection which is comprised of about 1700 plant specimens with recorded uses by the Menomoni, Meskwaki, Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Winnebago of Wisconsin.

Smith visited the various Indian tribes from 1921 through 1928 to identify plants used by the Indians. Greatest attention was paid to those plants used as medicines, but he also recorded those that provided food, fiber, and dyes. He began his studies at a time when many tribes were abandoning the traditional use of plants. By living with the people and talking with the elders, he was able to learn of their most commonly used plants. He would show a plant to an individual, record if and how it was used, and then make a pressed specimen to document the plant. Equally important, he recorded the Indian names for the plants and how they prepared them for food and medicines. Smith realized that because of the sanctity of their medicinal knowledge he would never receive full information about the uses of plants as medicines. He also knew the particular use of a plant as a remedy often was known only to a single medicine man and not to the rest of the tribe. Nevertheless, he proceeded to gather as much information as he could, and in the process he recorded much about the lives of the Indians at that time. His findings were published in the Bulletin of the Public Museum between 1923 and 1933.

Smith's works have been used and referenced by many scholars over the years. Not only by botanists, but also by ethnologists and linguists. There is current interest in seeing Smith's works republished and also publishing the remainder of his fieldnotes that were being prepared for print at the time of his death in 1933. His plant collection along with the accompanying data are an important part of the Museum's botanical collections. Just as recent studies provide basic knowledge for new exhibits, Smith's work contains a wealth of information to draw upon when creating exhibits such as the Museum's newest exhibit, A Tribute To Survival.

The botanical collections of the Museum serve as a valuable resource and are an enduring testimony of the efforts of many to expand our knowledge of plants. Whether providing information on medicinal uses, documenting a flora that has long since disappeared or verifying an identification, they help us to better understand and appreciate the significance of plants in our world.