NORTH AMERICA

North American herbarium collections from bioprospecting programs active since 1986 number over 10,000 species. Botanical expeditions have been conducted to many areas of the United States, but have generally focused on areas of high diversity, particularly the desert Southwest, California, the Pacific Northwest, the Southeast and the Smoky Mountain region. Most of the collections have taken place in areas under the jurisdiction of the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, as well as Department of Defense military bases and roadside right-of-ways.

The herbarium vouchers collected in the field serve as both permanent reference material for bulk material utilized for biological screening and contribute to taxonomic research at MBG. Vouchers are generally collected in sets of 4-8 for distribution to other herbaria. For select species encountered in the field, DNA samples are placed in silica gel, preserved in MBG’s DNA bank and utilized by specialists for phylogenetic studies. All specimen data is entered into MGB’s plant database TROPICOS, which is available on the Web, as well as an Access database for internal use.

Plants of high conservation value, endemics or species new or poorly represented in the MBG herbarium are often collected and used exclusively for taxonomic studies. Special permits and permission by resident botanists are procured to collect such specimens. Attention is always taken in the field to collect only those species in healthy populations regardless of the conservation status. A list of a few of such recent collections follows.

Family
Ericaceae
Liliaceae
Asclepiadaceae
Vitaceae
Lamiaceae
Commelinaceae
Euphorbiaceae

Brassicaceae
Polemoniaceae
Poaceae

An interesting secondary project that emerged from a bioprospecting program was a survey of representative species in each of the subsections of the genus Arctostaphylos. This resulted in collections of many of the 61 recognized species north of Mexico and included many of the California endemics, including Arctostaphylos catalinae, A. insularis, A. otayensis, A. edmundsii, A. pajaroensis, A. montereyensis and A. pumila.

North American collections from bioprospecting programs continue to be made and currently contribute an estimated 500 specimens to the MBG herbarium each year.