August Monthly Meeting: Herbarium

RGEV Monthly Meeting

August 18, 2026

RGEV Business:

The August monthly meeting was held on 8/18/26 at the Bell Museum of Natural History on the St. Paul campus of the University of Minnesotaa.

• Tina Frederickson asked for help confirming what she thinks are jumping worms, found at Manitou Ridge golf course. Several gardeners from the audience volunteered.

• Travis Sandland is volunteering at the State Fair at the potted plant show and encourages everyone to come with a potted plant to participate in the show.

• Darren Lochner announced that most people should have received their name tags and shirts. If members don’t like the name on their name tag, they should update it in the state database. If they want a new name tag, please let Darren know. If members want a different size shirt, please return shirt(s) to the office and use the portal to request a new size.

• Darren also answered questions from the audience regarding what volunteers should say about the compost sites that have found jumping worms. Darren promised to ask what the counties are telling residents and whether the counties are planning to put out mulch and compost for residents. He noted that the materials are processed at a central site and distributed, so material at all sites may contain jumping worms.

Education: Bell Museum Herbarium:

Our August program featured Dr. George Weiblen, Science Director of the University of MN Herbarium and University of MN botany professor, and Dr. Tim Whitfeld, Collections Manager of the University of MN Herbarium.

Dr. Weiblen gave an introduction to the Bell Museum, which was designated as the state’s official natural history museum in1872. He noted that the museum’s extensive collections are spread across the U of M campus. The gardens around the Bell Museum include over 140 plants and are designed to be low-to-no maintenance.

Dr. Whitfeld gave the presentation on the herbarium. Many herbariums have only old specimens, but the Bell Museum has many recent specimens, thanks to collaboration with State agencies. The collection includes 995,094 specimens. Many are of vascular plants, but the collection also includes lichen, bryophytes, fungi, and algae. Many are from Minnesota. The oldest specimen was collected in 1832 from the St. Louis River of Lake Superior at Grand Portage.

The herbarium specimens serve many functions, including taxonomy, or the identification, description and evolutionary history of each specimen. Other uses include documenting species distribution, documenting the spread of invasive species, documenting extinct species, and understanding the past and forecasting the future. The audience was shown a specimen of cream milkvetch, which has not been found in Minnesota since 1895.

The herbarium is an ever-growing collection, adding several thousand specimens every year, gathered by state agencies and University faculty and students. Dr. Weiblen discussed the herbarium’s ongoing efforts to digitize their specimens. The MN Biodiversity Atlas (https://bellatlas.umn.edu/) was created by scientists for scientists, and is an important collection of 2.8 M records, but it isn’t user-friendly for most audiences. MN Wildflowers (https://www.minnesotawildflowers.info/) is a user-friendly, volunteer-created website that is very popular. In an effort to help maintain (but not replace) the MN Wildflower database, the Bell Museum is introducing Minnesota Flora this fall. Dr. Weiblen demonstrated the use of the Minnesota Flora website, showing how its user-friendly interface can be used to identify wildflowers based on color, flower shape, and other anatomy. The Minnesota Flora website will be debuted at the Bell Museum’s exhibit, Wild Beauty: The Botanical Art of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden Florilegium, in October.