Diane Lucas’s Generous Contributions to
the OSU Herbarium
Our beloved friend and colleague Diane Lucas passed away in July at age 91. While primarily a bryologist, she was interested in many aspects of science, nature and technology. A generous person, she always took the time to talk and be friendly. Here’s a photo of Diane from about 10 years ago, at one of the Ohio Moss and Lichen Association annual meetings, mixing with the members as usual. We all miss her greatly.
In addition to having an extraordinarily warm character and an inquiring mind, Diane was an avid collector, not only of moss, liverwort and hornwort specimens, but also of literature about them, especially identification manuals. Her daughters Sandy and Karen are aware of the value of her collections to the botanical community and eager to have them put to good use, so they graciously donated her specimens to the OSU Herbarium (OS) and her books to the OSU Herbarium Library, which are housed in adjoining rooms at the OSU Museum of Biological Diversity. These collections are magnificent.
The books, rather than being common ones, readily available and already among the library holdings (as is often the case with donated books), are for the most part difficult to obtain and very practical illustrated floras of exotic areas, i.e., unique works that enable researchers to identify specimens that otherwise couldn’t be. A few examples include “Mosses and Liverworts of Hong Kong,” “The Moss Flora of Mexico,” “Manual of Hawaiian Mosses,” and “Bladmossor Kompaktmossor-kapmossor,” the latter just one of several non-English works. The breadth of Diane’s library is astounding and will greatly enhance our ability to tackle specimens from farther afield.
Specimen-wise, Diane assembled a collection of the same high quality and uniqueness as her library. Rather than being mainly duplicates of already well-represented species, perhaps with scanty location, habitat and substrate data (as is sometimes the case with donated personal herbaria), the gift includes both her reference collection and recent collections from forays. (Note: The Consortium of North American Bryophyte Herbaria already includes will over 6,000 specimens for which Diane H. Lucas is either the primary collector or an associated one. This includes about 2500 at Kent State (KE), 1000 at OS, and, perhaps most importantly because her approximately 2400 specimens comprise more than half of the total housed there, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History (CMH). The specimens are neatly packeted with typed labels in standard herbarium label format, including ecological data and G.P.S. coordinates.
Would you like to help cement Diane’s legacy as a preeminent bryological collector? Assistance is needed entering data from her specimen labels into the electronic record-keeping system used by OS, The Consortium of North American Bryophyte Herbaria (CNABH) “portal.” Presently there is a student volunteer, Camryn Ford, who is imaging the specimen packets and uploading onto the CNABH portal along with mere “skeletal” data consisting of species, collector, state and county. It is hoped that some OMLA members might wish to finish the process by joining the Consortium, receiving editing privileges for the OS collection, and, working remotely if desired, typing the remaining data from the imaged labels into the respective fields on the collections management system. This volunteer work is fun, relaxing, and educational, and the results will be a tribute to our friend we miss so dearly.
-Bob Klips