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CSU view: herbarium celebrates 10 year anniversary

By Jan Joslin | September 6, 2022

It’s been 10 years since the Charleston Southern Herbarium was registered with the New York Botanical Garden.

Kevin Jones

Curator Kevin Jones says the herbarium started as a project of Dr. Jim Barrier and Professor Steve Best in 1994. In recent years, Jones has worked with students and research assistants in his Plant Taxonomy class to expand the collection, focusing in the past 10 years on the undeveloped parts of the campus.

Housing approximately 3,000 specimens today, the collection includes some unusual mosses, orchid species, some invasive species, a parasitic plant which grows on the roots of trees and can only be seen while blooming, and much more. Jones said it has been a few semesters since students have found something the collection didn’t already have.

The CSU Herbarium is housed in Jones’s office in specially designed storage in the Science building.

Fun Fact: Professor Jones has hosted the Coastal Carolina Orchid Society meetings at CSU since 2011.