Thanks for participating in our December STEM club events with the Christiansburg Library! Below are the online activities and videos for our take home packs and story time. *Online mistletoe scavenger hunt (PDF) VIDEOS: *Mistletoe collecting video! *All about mistletoe *Welcome to the Massey Herbarium! Follow us on social media or tag us (@MasseyHerbarium) in …
Now that all of Stinky Phil’s flowering structures have been sampled, manipulated, and pressed it is time to close up the plant press! These contraptions help us make specimens that are fully dried, totally flat, and the proper size for standard herbarium sheets. Once the press is ready, we place it in a drying cabinet …
Once Stinky Phil was done blooming, we sampled portions of its flowering structure or inflorescence. First, this walk-around shows Stinky Phil’s condition before sampling: Herbaria try to be thorough and sample all parts of the plant, especially the reproductive structures. In this case, we waited until the flower was done blooming so the public could …
Read more “Sampling VT’s Stinky Phil to make a museum specimen”
The corpse plant affectionately nicknamed “Stinky Phil” bloomed in the Virginia Tech CALS greenhouse for the second time in June 2020. These plants (Amorphophallus titanum) have the largest unbranched inflorescence, or flowering stalk, in the world. They’re also notable for their stench! These fly and beetle pollinated plants produce a terrible stench of dirty diapers …
Read more “Preparing VT’s Stinky Phil as a museum specimen!”
Our first workshop covered the identification and illustration of mosses, liverworts, and hornworts this past spring break. We hosted Dr. Blanka Aguero from Duke University to assist participants with learning local bryophyte species and identification techniques. The following day we hosted Lara Call Gastinger to demonstrate illustration methods for mosses. Students also had the opportunity …
Read more “Combining illustration and identification at our Bryophyte workshop”
Curator Jordan Metzgar and his undergraduate researchers attended and presented their research at the SPNHC 2019 conference. This meeting focuses on natural history collections and my students were active in the Natural History Collections Club workshop and symposium. The conference was in Chicago and we enjoyed exploring the Windy City. We visited Cloud Gate (aka, …
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Last week I helped to confirm the ID of Virginia’s first population of giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum) in Clarke County. The Facebook post about it has exploded and made its way all over the internet! We were a small part of the team that identified it–the landowner’s report was made to their local master gardener’s …
We enjoyed our last Herbarium tea of 2017 this past Friday. Our theme was holiday plants so we had specimens and displays of notable holiday plants like poinsettias, holly, and mistletoe! I was surprised to learn that mistletoe is quite rare in the area with only one known population in the Montgomery & Giles Counties …
We participated in the VT Science Festival on Saturday, Nov. 4 and talked botany with some of the over 5,000 attendees! Our table featured three activities. The Wheel of Destiny had a fall foliage theme and taught players the major pigments responsible for our colorful autumn leaf displays. We also had a make-your-own-specimen station for …
We had a full house with 15 volunteers at the Massey Herbarium’s first specimen transcription event last Friday. Our event was part of the four-day global WeDigBio initiative. By transcribing specimen labels from photographs, volunteers can unlock these data and make them available for anyone to use online. Volunteers at universities and museums on four continents combined to …