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The University of California at Davis used to be known as the University of California Farm. The J. M Tucker Herbarium began as the Botany Department Herbarium at the University Farm in 1922. In that year, Professor W.W. Robbins (the author of Weeds of California) founded the Botany Department, and he started the herbarium as a reference collection for himself and his students. Early collections by Robbins were mostly agricultural weeds, poisonous plants, and economic plants, often specimens that were sent to Robbins for identification. |
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On a recent busy day, the UC Davis Herbarium |
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Dr. Katherine Esau, the renowned plant anatomist, was hired in 1928 to teach several botany courses, among them Plant Taxonomy. As a result, the Botany Herbarium took up residence in Esau's laboratory in the old Botany Building, which stood where the present Dramatic Arts building is now. Although the day to day curation of the specimens was taken up over the years by a series of assistants, Professor Esau made collections each spring while preparing for her plant taxonomy course. Accessions from this period were largely natives from the Sacramento Valley and adjacent coast ranges. In 1946, Dr. Charles Heiser, the well-known expert on the Solanaceae (tomato family), joined the U.C. Davis faculty for one year. He was the first taxonomist to be in charge of the herbarium, and he left a surprising number of collections from his short tenure as Director.
Upon Heiser's departure, John Tucker, then a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, was hired to replace him. This began an era of increased activity for the Botany Herbarium, which by that time comprised 9400 specimens in 6 wooden cases. Dr. Tucker collected widely in California, but then, as now, he concentrated his efforts on the genus Quercus (oaks). Due to his research, the herbaria contain one of the best collections of oaks in the world.
By 1950, Dr. Tucker saw the need for more space for the collections, and in
that year, he moved them to Temporary Building 32, which was across from the
Botany Building. The wooden cases lined one wall of a narrow tin-roofed room,
and the occupants sweltered in the Davis summer heat. For the first few years,
John Tucker was kept busy doing identifications and curating the herbarium
without assistance. In time, it became apparent that he needed assistance, and
in 1953, a young Mills College graduate, June McCaskill, was hired to assist
him. June built a reputation over her 38
years of service as an expert on weeds and poisonous plants and was a
co-author of the Growers Weed Identification Handbook. She passed away in May
of 2001.
Dr. Tucker initiated an exchange program in 1951, which is a way of trading
extra specimens with other institutions, and in this way the Botany Herbarium
grew and became world-wide in scope. By 1954 he had to purchase the first
steel specimen cases. In the spring of 1960, the
Botany Herbarium moved to its present location in 262 Robbins Hall, acquiring
61 new steel cases, enough, it was thought, to house the collections for the
next 25 years.
By the early 1970s, however, the collections had already begun
to outgrow their quarters. This was due, in part, to the hiring of a new
taxonomist in 1967, 
Dr. Grady Webster. Due to his and his students' extensive collecting, Dr.
Webster, a specialist in the Euphorbiaceae (the spurge family), dramatically
increased the numbers of specimens coming into the herbarium. To solve the
space problem, half-height cases were purchased for the herbarium, and these
were placed on top of the full-height cases.
Upon Dr. Tucker's retirement in 1986, the Botany Department Herbarium was officially named the J. M. Tucker Herbarium, and Dr. Webster became its new director. He filled that role until my arrival, although he officially retired in 1993. After June's retirement in 1991, G. Fred Hrusa (then a graduate student) curated the collections for four years and graciously remained after my arrival to "show me the ropes". Fred is now the botanist for the California Department of Food and Agriculture. He is a prolific collector himself and has donated several thousand specimens to the J. M. Tucker Herbarium.
The J. M. Tucker Herbarium has grown to about 250,000 mounted and unmounted specimens. The collections are from all parts of the world, but they are mainly from California (especially the Central Valley, the Sierra, and the Sonoran and Mohave Deserts), other parts of the United States, Mediterranean Europe, Mexico, and Ecuador.
Between 1999 and 2000, with funding from the Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust, the UC Davis Environmental Horticulture Herbarium was curated and incorporated into the Tucker Herbarium, adding thousands of valuable California garden plants. In 2001, with funding from the American Viticulture Foundation and the Bartholomew Foundation, the UC Davis Viticulture Hebarium was saved from disintegration and added to the Tucker Herbarium. This valuable viticulture collection documents what grape cultivars have been grown in California since 1885.
The Beecher Crampton Herbarium Collection
The second largest collection in the UC Davis Herbarium is the Beecher
Crampton Herbarium Collection. That collection had its origins on the Berkeley
Campus, where it was started in 1913 by Patrick B. Kennedy of the Agronomy
Department. Dr. Kennedy was a teacher of range science, and a specialist in
the genus Trifolium (clover). He founded the Agronomy Herbarium as a
teaching collection, with special attention to developing a collection of
grasses. The herbarium was most likely housed in Hilgard Hall, and according
to Professor Crampton, Kennedy had a garden of experimental plots on the slope
to the west of the building, from which he collected some of his specimens.
Many of Kennedy's collections (but not all) can be found in the Crampton
Collection.
About 1926, Kennedy moved the collection to the then University Farm at Davis. It was housed in the old Agronomy Building which was on the site of the present Nutrition Building, south of Walker Hall. After Kennedy's death in 1930, the collection was curated for a time by Ben Madson, Chair of the Agronomy Division, until Alan A. Beetle was hired to be the curator in 1941. Dr. Beetle, an agrostologist, remained at Davis for 5 years, contributing many specimens to the herbarium and leaving three type specimens in the collection. He left in 1946 for the University of Wyoming, and the herbarium was then curated until 1952 by a technician, Robert Tofsrud.
Beecher Crampton, who was hired to replace Tofsrud, came to Davis from the
University of California at Berkeley. Over the years, he taught range plant
courses, building up the grass collection to the finest in the state, and in
1974 he published a much used guide to California grasses "Grasses in
California." Due to Professor Crampton's interest in collecting from
vernal pools, the herbarium has a good representation of vernal pool plants,
many of which are now endangered. The collection was moved in the 1950s to the
new Agronomy Building, Hunt Hall, where it was located in room 235. Professor
Crampton retired in 1984, leaving the collection without a curator until 1988,
when it was moved to Robbins Hall and was officially named the Beecher
Crampton Herbarium Collection. At this writing, the Crampton Collection
comprises about 55,000 mounted and unmounted specimens. Between 1997 and
2000, with the help of funding from the National Science Foundation, the
Crampton Collection was intercalated with the Tucker Herbarium, and the
grasses of both collections were brought up to date in terms of their
scientific names.
Recent Changes in the Herbarium:
We have a large number of part-time student assistants who help us with filing, label-making, and mounting. We also have a number of student interns and volunteers who help us with various projects, such as curating our library, entering data into our database of type specimens, filing specimens, inventorying our fruit-and-cone cabinet, and working on our Webpage. There is a tremendous amount to accomplish, and it could not be done without the help of all who work or volunteer here.
Since 1992, we have had a support organization called the Davis Botanical Society. The Davis Botanical Society provides money to the herbarium for library purchases, has a student grant program, and runs programs and field trips each year. The herbarium also receives computer support from Tom Starbuck who works for the Center for Biosystematics, an umbrella organization for campus biological collections.
UC Davis Home | Vegetable Crops Home | Section of Plant Biology Home | Center For Biosystematics
Questions or comments? Email us: herbarium mail
Center for Plant Diversity (1026 Sciences Laboratory Building),
Section of Plant Biology,
One Shields Ave., University of California at Davis, Davis, CA 95616; 530-752-1091