Janice James – BRIT volunteer trip February 22, 2020

The Botanical Research Institute of Texas, or BRIT, is located in Fort Worth, adjacent to the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens. The sleek, LEEDS-accredited building has been in operation since 2011.  Herbaria are the places that plant specimens are compiled and maintained. Collecting and keeping specimens of plants, which are pressed, dried, labelled, and mounted on sheets of paper, is of scientific value for several reasons. Having a plant specimen provides an example of a species in a particular time and place, which is important for recording the occurrence, range and distribution of plant species. It allows us to document any changes in those same attributes over time. It can also illustrate such important information as flowering period and, as such, any changes in seasonal development. Such information is important in documenting the effects of climate change, for example. More recently, genetic information from specimens has become another important resource for study. By comparing genetic information from past specimens with current, it is possible to investigate changes, such as losses, in genetic variability over time. To make plant specimens from the herbarium readily available for study to scientists globally, the pressed samples at BRIT are in the process of being digitized (scanned) and uploaded into a searchable database more useful for scientific research. As the plant specimens are individually labelled, the information from the labels has to be transcribed, one at a time, into the database along with the scanned photo, by humans. The handwriting on the labels varies widely, as specimens are from the 1700s onward, and is not readly legible to computer-aided input systems. Herbarium collections are therefore valuable scientific resources. The BRIT in Fort Worth is one of the top ten largest Herbaria in the United States. It is an amalgamation of the original collections from SMU (Southern Methodist University), Vanderbuilt University, Louisiana State University, along with BRIT specimens. Recently, Dr. Nelson Rich from Collin College has donated his personal collections to BRIT as well. These most recent specimens have to be sorted and prioritized before they can be incorporated into the main collections.