An herbarium summarizes the history of where and when its plant specimens were found. An herbarium is a priceless nature library, providing valuable and indispensable resources for various scientific projects as well as for educational activities and community outreach and service. The TWU Herbarium fulfills entirely these functions.

The TWU Herbarium contains approximately 1,200 specimens. All the specimens date between 1903-1947. Among those, an estimated number of 1,100+ are specimens of vascular plants with an estimated 700+ species from 112 families, representing 63% of the plant families found in Texas. Approximately 100 specimens are still in 1940s newspaper stacks where they were press-dried, ready to be identified and mounted. Most of them have been identified by their collectors and complete herbarium labels were found along with the specimens inside the newspaper envelopes, while other specimens have only written notes on the newspaper envelope itself.

Based on the composition and geographic concentration of our herbarium, it seems that initially it focused on the Texas flora and later became nationwide and even tried to become worldwide in scope. Approximately 75% of the specimens were collected in three main areas in Texas: Dallas-Fort Worth-Denton, Austin-Houston-coastal area, and Brewster County, in the Trans-Pecos region of the Far West Texas, from what is known today as the Big Bend National Park. This park has national significance as the only large acreage of Chihuahuan Desert where the nature is preserved undisturbed by grazing and development. The Brewster County specimens in our herbarium were collected before the area was established as Texas’ first national park in 1944. Approximately 25% of the specimens were collected in other counties in Texas, as well as in other parts of the USA, such as California, Arkansas, Wisconsin, Long Island in New York State, today’s Dune State Park in Indiana, and Petite Point Sable in Muskegon, Michigan. The collection contains plants from outside the USA as well, specifically from Mexico, Costa Rica, Scotland, Iceland, and Jamaica.