Botany was included by Mary Lyon in the curriculum of the first year of the Seminary, 1837-1838, and from that time until 1851 was a required subject, with students taking two or three years of the course, until it became entirely elective in 1897. In the years when the course was a required subject, plant collecting was focused on flowering plants and limited to the times of year when they were in bloom. Professors at the Seminary would teach botany when it was in season, for three weeks in the fall and six weeks in the spring, and teach other subjects during the rest of the academic year, until the 1887-1888 school year, when Professors Henrietta Hooker and Lydia Shattuck both taught full year courses in botany.
Students were advised to collect the entire plant when possible. They then laid the plant between the leaves of a folded paper, sandwiched this paper between several sheets of absorbent paper, such as a folded newspaper, and put the entire stack between boards, applying pressure. The absorbing sheets were changed regularly until the plant was thoroughly dried.
The botany department was housed in Williston Hall from 1876 until 1917, when the building was destroyed by fire. The original herbarium of the College, which included plants collected by Mary Lyon, was lost. It was rebuilt with specimens donated by alumnae, students, professors, and other institutions to form the herbarium here now.
Click on the images below to learn more about botany department faculty members.
Herbarium of Alice A. Rogers, class of 1912, created in 1906.
This is a fine example of an herbarium made for class work, as the teacher’s notes testify. Every specimen is accompanied by a detailed page of notes on its form, the date it was collected, where it was found, and a drawing.
