ITMN Chapter Meeting

April 27

How to Collect Plants for BRIT

Preserved plants specimens with accompanying data provide us with important information about plant diversity and distribution, and represent an observable, relatively permanent, and verifiable form of evidence of a plant’s existence in time and space. If these specimens are properly preserved and maintained, they can last for several hundred years. Join us in exploring the best practices for collecting scientific specimens, specifically for deposit in herbaria. We will discuss methods for vascular plants specifically, but will briefly address fungi, bryophytes, and lichens.

Tiana Rehman joined the BRIT staff in 2003 as Herbarium Collections Assistant, having previously volunteered with the BRIT Andes to Amazon Biodiversity Program. Tiana has been the Collections Manager of the BRIT herbarium since 2009, and as such facilitates the care, usage and growth of the plant collection housed in the BRIT herbarium, as well as its interpretation for the public. Tiana’s interests in collections management include the task of keeping the myriad physical and virtual data elements that contribute to project-based research both current and accessible.
Tiana’s M.S. in Environmental Science from Texas Christian University was earned while working at BRIT, and her thesis addressed the diversity and small-scale distribution of members of the Myristicaceae (nutmeg family of plants) at the Los Amigos Biological Station in Madre de Dios, Peru. She continues to be an active field botanist and has contributed specimens to local (Texas) and international (Peru, Costa Rica, Jamaica) floristics projects. Additionally, Tiana has interests in photography, microscopy and biodiversity informatics (e.g. Atrium Biodiversity Information System, Apiary Project).