Troy University Herbarium

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

07/06/2026

Herbarium specimens do more than document plants—they preserve snapshots of human history and changing landscapes.

Early 20th-century collections associated with U.S. Forest Service researcher Lenthall Wyman of the Southern Forest Experiment Station help illustrate how closely forestry science, industry, and land management were tied together in the southeastern United States. Wyman’s work at Camp Pinchot in Florida focused on pine reproduction and the southern naval stores (turpentine) industry at a time when applied forestry research was shaping how these forests were managed and used.

Those same landscapes were undergoing major change. Choctawhatchee National Forest, established in 1908 under President Theodore Roosevelt, once had Camp Pinchot as the Forest Supervisor’s summer headquarters—accessible only by boat from Pensacola. Decades later, in 1940, more than 340,000 acres were transferred from the U.S. Forest Service to the War Department, ultimately becoming what is now Eglin Air Force Base. Camp Pinchot later became the residence for the base commander.

Herbarium specimens collected in and around these forests preserve a biological record of places that no longer exist in their original form. They allow us to reconstruct past ecosystems, track forest change over time, and connect today’s landscapes to their scientific and cultural history.