Troy University Herbarium

10/19/2026

🌿🔬 BOTANICAL HISTORY: DR. THOMAS M. PULLEN 🌿
Did you know that one botanist helped transform Mississippi from one of the least botanically documented states in the Southeast into a center for plant research?
Meet Dr. Thomas M. Pullen, a botanist whose dedication to collecting and preserving plants left a lasting legacy at the University of Mississippi.
🌱 BUILDING A HERBARIUM FROM THE GROUND UP
In 1963, Dr. Pullen joined the Biology Department at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. At the time, Mississippi was considered one of the least thoroughly collected states in the southeastern United States.
Pullen recognized that understanding Mississippi's plant diversity required something fundamental—a permanent scientific collection documenting which plants grew in the state and where they occurred.
He began by rescuing historically important collections made by earlier botanists, including E. N. Lowe, A. Allison, and T. L. Bailey. Some of these specimens dated to the late 1800s and had been in storage for more than 40 years!
🌿 46,000 SPECIMENS IN LESS THAN A DECADE!
During the 1960s and early 1970s, Pullen, his colleagues, and students conducted botanical surveys throughout Mississippi.
With support from the National Science Foundation, their efforts helped increase the University of Mississippi Herbarium from essentially no organized holdings in 1963 to more than 46,000 specimens by the end of 1971!
These collections provide an invaluable record of Mississippi's native and introduced plants.
🌎 A LEGACY THAT CONTINUES TODAY
Pullen retired in 1983, but his contributions were not forgotten.
In 1999, the University of Mississippi Herbarium was formally dedicated in his memory and became known as the Thomas M. Pullen Herbarium (MISS).
Today, the collection contains more than 80,000 plant specimens!
🌳 THE TROY UNIVERSITY HERBARIUM CONNECTION
The Troy University Herbarium (TROY) collection preserves over 100 duplicate specimens made by Dr. Pullen.
A herbarium is more than a collection of dried plants. It is a library of biodiversity and a record of landscapes that may no longer exist.
Dr. Thomas M. Pullen understood that importance, and his life's work continues to benefit botanists, conservationists, and students today.
📍 Troy University Herbarium (TROY) | Troy, Alabama

10/05/2026

🌿 From Our Collections: Wolfgang Wolf and the Flora of Alabama 🌿
Herbarium specimens are more than pressed plants—they are pieces of scientific and historical evidence. Among the historic collections preserved in the Troy University Herbarium are specimens collected by Wolfgang Wolf (1872–1950), one of Alabama’s most interesting early botanists.
Wolf was a German-born Benedictine monk and largely self-taught botanist who lived and worked at St. Bernard Abbey in Cullman, Alabama. After arriving there in the 1890s, he became fascinated by the plants growing around the Abbey and began teaching himself botany. Over the following decades, he carefully documented the flora of north-central Alabama and assembled a personal herbarium containing thousands of specimens.
Wolf became especially knowledgeable about groups such as fameflowers (Talinum) and trout lilies (Erythronium). He published several plant names, corresponded with prominent botanists of his time, and specimens of his collections are now preserved in major herbaria.
His work is a reminder that important scientific contributions are not always made in large universities or laboratories. Wolf began simply by becoming curious about the plants around him, then spent decades observing, collecting, identifying, and documenting Alabama’s botanical diversity.
Today, specimens collected by Wolf continue to have scientific value. They provide a permanent record of what species occurred in Alabama, where they grew, and when they were collected—information that can be used to study changes in plant distributions, taxonomy, habitats, and the environment over nearly a century.
That is one of the great strengths of an herbarium: a plant collected on an ordinary day decades ago may become an invaluable scientific record for researcher’s generations later.
🌱 Every herbarium specimen has two stories—the story of the plant and the story of the person who collected it.

08/31/2026

🌿 A Botanical Partnership Preserved in the Herbarium: Theodore and Else Frye 🌿
Some of the most fascinating historical specimens in the Troy University Herbarium are not large or showy plants. They are tiny mosses and liverworts, collected by botanists whose work helped document the diversity of plants across North America and beyond.
Among those collectors were Theodore Christian Frye (1869–1962) and his wife, Else Marie Frye. Theodore Frye was an influential American botanist and bryologist who spent much of his career at the University of Washington. He became especially well known for his study of mosses and liverworts, helping to advance the scientific understanding of these often-overlooked plants.
But Frye’s botanical work was also very much a family partnership.
🌎 Theodore and Else Frye collected plants together extensively, and some of their most interesting fieldwork took them to Mexico during collecting trips in 1939, 1940, and 1941.
These expeditions added important specimens to botanical collections and documented plants growing in regions very different from the Pacific Northwest, where Theodore spent much of his professional career. Specimens bearing the names T. C. Frye and E. M. Frye preserve the record of that shared fieldwork more than 80 years later.
Theodore Frye later became one of North America’s important authorities on liverworts, collaborating with botanist Lois Clark on the monumental Hepaticae of North America. His field collections helped provide the physical specimens upon which studies of bryophyte diversity and classification were built.
But the labels on these specimens also remind us that botanical exploration was not always the work of a single scientist. Else Frye was an active participant in the collecting expeditions she shared with her husband, and specimens carrying both of their names preserve evidence of that partnership.
🏛️ Here at the Troy University Herbarium, historical specimens collected by Theodore and Else Frye connect our collection in Alabama with botanical exploration that took place thousands of miles away and generations ago.
A tiny moss or liverwort collected in Mexico in 1940 may occupy only a few square centimeters in an herbarium packet, but it represents something much larger:
a botanical expedition, a scientific partnership, a record of biodiversity, and a piece of the history of American botany.
That is the enduring value of natural history collections. Specimens collected decades—or even centuries—ago continue to provide information to scientists today.
🌿 Tiny plants. Distant places. Two collectors. One lasting scientific record.

08/29/2026

08/24/2026

🍂🌿 A New Semester, New Faces, and New Discoveries at the TROY Herbarium! 🌿🍂
A new fall semester is beginning at Troy University, and that means new students, new classes, new research projects—and new faces visiting the Troy University Herbarium (TROY).
For many students, a herbarium may be something they have never encountered before. At first glance, it may look like rows of cabinets filled with dried plants. But each specimen is much more than that. Every sheet is a scientific record documenting what plant was found, where it grew, when it was collected, and who collected it.
Together, these specimens allow us to study changes in plant distributions, flowering times, invasive species, rare plants, habitat change, and the botanical history of Alabama and the Southeast.
The TROY Herbarium houses more than 54,000 specimens, representing decades of collecting, teaching, research, and conservation work. Students who visit the collection may learn how to identify plants, prepare and mount specimens, use botanical keys, conduct research, or simply discover how much plant diversity surrounds us.
🌱 And every semester brings something new.
A student may walk into the herbarium for the first time simply because of a class assignment—and leave having discovered an interest in botany, ecology, conservation, museum collections, or field research.
We are excited to welcome both returning students and new students to Troy University this fall, and we hope many of you will find your way to the herbarium during your time at TROY.
Whether you are here to identify an unknown plant, work on a research project, explore Alabama's botanical diversity, or just see what a herbarium actually looks like, welcome!
Here's to a new semester filled with curiosity, discovery, and perhaps a few plants you have never noticed before. 🌿🔍
Welcome to TROY—and welcome to the Herbarium!

08/17/2026

🥜 From Herbarium Sheet to Alabama History: The Peanut
It may look humble, but few plants are as closely tied to the agricultural history of southeastern Alabama as the peanut (Arachis hypogaea).
The peanut is not actually a nut—it is a member of the legume family (Fabaceae), making it a relative of peas, beans, clover, and redbud. Its story becomes even more interesting after flowering. Peanut flowers develop above ground, but after pollination a specialized stalk called a peg grows downward and pushes the developing fruit into the soil. The peanut pods then mature underground, a process known as geocarpy.
Peanuts originated in South America and were cultivated by Indigenous peoples long before European contact. They eventually spread around the world and became an important crop in the southern United States.
In Alabama, peanuts took on special importance during the early 20th century. For decades, much of southern Alabama's economy depended heavily on cotton. When the boll weevil devastated cotton production, farmers were forced to diversify. Peanuts proved especially well suited to the sandy soils and warm climate of the Wiregrass region, and their cultivation expanded rapidly.
The work of George Washington Carver at Tuskegee Institute helped encourage southern farmers to diversify away from continuous cotton production. Carver promoted peanuts, sweet potatoes, cowpeas, and other crops as part of crop-rotation systems that could improve soils depleted by years of cotton farming. Although Carver is sometimes incorrectly credited with inventing peanut butter, his greater contribution was demonstrating and promoting numerous practical uses for peanuts and encouraging a more diversified agricultural economy.
Peanuts became so important to southeastern Alabama that Dothan became known as the "Peanut Capital of the World." The region celebrates that agricultural heritage each year through the National Peanut Festival, while peanut production remains an important part of Alabama agriculture today.
Herbarium specimens help preserve another side of this history. A pressed peanut plant documents its leaves, flowers, stems, roots, and sometimes its unusual underground fruits. Along with the collection locality and date recorded on its label, a specimen becomes a permanent record of where and when the plant was grown or collected.
🌿 Herbaria preserve more than plants—they preserve evidence of agriculture, culture, economics, and history.
The next time you open a jar of peanut butter or pass a peanut field in south Alabama, remember that you are looking at a plant that helped reshape the agricultural landscape of the Wiregrass.

08/10/2026

🌿 What Makes a Type Specimen So Important? 🌿
Among the most scientifically important specimens housed in any herbarium are type specimens.
A type specimen is the specimen, or one of the specimens, to which the scientific name of a plant is permanently attached when that species is formally described. In other words, it serves as the reference point for the name.
When botanists encounter a plant whose identity is uncertain, they may compare it with the original published description, other specimens, and—when necessary—the type specimen. This helps determine exactly what the author of the name intended that species to represent.
🔬 Why does this matter?
Plant names can change as new information becomes available, species are split or combined, or older names are reexamined. The type specimen provides a fixed standard that helps keep botanical nomenclature stable and precise.
Because of their importance, type specimens receive special care in herbarium collections. They are carefully labeled, documented, and photographed so researchers around the world can study them without repeatedly handling the originals.
A dried plant mounted on paper may not look especially valuable at first glance—but a type specimen can be the scientific foundation for the name of an entire species.
🌱 At the Troy University Herbarium (TROY), preserving type material and other historical specimens helps ensure that future botanists can continue to study plant diversity, taxonomy, and the history of botanical discovery.

08/03/2026

🌿 Botanical Pioneer Spotlight: Alvan Wentworth Chapman 📖
Long before field guides, smartphone apps, and online plant databases, one man helped introduce the remarkable plants of the southeastern United States to the scientific world—Dr. Alvan Wentworth Chapman (1809–1899).
A physician by profession, Chapman settled in Apalachicola, Florida, where he developed a lifelong passion for botany. At a time when the flora of the Southeast was still poorly known, he spent decades exploring the forests, swamps, coastal dunes, and longleaf pine ecosystems of Florida and neighboring states, collecting thousands of plant specimens and documenting many species that had never before been carefully studied.
In 1860, Chapman published his landmark work, Flora of the Southern United States. It was the first comprehensive flora devoted specifically to the southeastern United States and quickly became the standard reference for botanists working from Virginia to Texas. Multiple revised editions followed, influencing generations of plant scientists and laying the foundation for our modern understanding of southeastern plant diversity.
Chapman was particularly fascinated by the unique plants of the Gulf Coastal Plain, helping bring attention to the region's extraordinary biodiversity. Today, his name lives on in numerous plant species that bear the epithet chapmanii, honoring his many contributions to botanical science.
Herbarium specimens collected by Chapman remain invaluable today. Preserved in herbaria across the country, these collections provide a permanent record of where species occurred more than 150 years ago. They continue to support research in plant taxonomy, ecology, conservation, and even climate change, demonstrating that a carefully collected specimen can remain scientifically valuable for centuries.
The next time you visit the Troy University Herbarium, remember that every specimen is part of a tradition established by pioneering botanists like Alvan Wentworth Chapman—preserving the history of our flora so future generations can continue to study, understand, and protect it.

07/27/2026