Dan Potter is the new chair of the Department of Plant Sciences, overseeing graduate and undergraduate programming, 60 faculty members, several emeriti professors and many greenhouses, labs and teaching facilities.
Room 1026 in the Sciences Laboratory Building is not your ordinary space. It’s home to the UC Davis Center for Plant Diversity Herbarium and a world of 300,000 preserved plants, including lichens, algae, mosses and other specimens.
The Center for Plant Diversity has over 300,000 dead plants called herbarium specimens. Each specimens consists of a flattened and dried plant glued onto a sheet of 11 x 17 inch archival paper with a label in the lower right corner. The label has specimen data, including where, when and by whom the specimen was collected. These data can provide detailed information about the collection location such as GIS data, elevation, soils and plant community.
