What is the value of making collections as well as recording observations of biodiversity?

The UBC Herbarium holds one of the largest collections of British Columbian plants.  Even though there is a large collection existing, our province still needs exploration!

The specimens “provide a permanent record of our changing flora over time, documenting all plant species discovered so far, their variation, and their past and present distributions.”

Many areas are still poorly known or have been rarely collected, especially in recent years.

Continuing to collect gives us a more complete picture of changing plant communities over time, and allows us to track trends and variation.

It’s important to preserve and curate the specimens, as scientific classifications change and more discoveries are made about the flora.  One never knows what the future of the specimens could hold – we’re now able to extract DNA out of specimens that are decades old, something perhaps unimaginable at the time they were collected!