Spanning southern California, southwestern Nevada into Arizona and Utah, the Mojave Desert is one of the most floristically biodiverse regions in the United States. For the past 28 years, James André, Tasha La Doux, and their collaborators at the UC Granite Mountains Desert Research Center (GMDRC) have worked on an inventory of Mojave Desert plant species. In the process, the botanists collected over 60,000 specimens and discovered 235 new taxa. As the GMDRC herbarium nears its capacity, the UC Davis Herbarium agreed to accession a set of their Mojave Desert specimens. Funded by the State of California and California Institute for Biodiversity, the Collections Rapid Rescue Grant has allowed our Herbarium to accept and process 1,775 unmounted plant specimens. These specimens have been a welcome addition to our collection, which previously lacked a comprehensive representation of Southern California plants.

Several students are processing these specimens: mounting the specimens on herbarium paper, adding a barcode and accession stamp, imaging them, and finally tying the images to the label information in our online specimen database. By joining this project, these students have the opportunity to learn first-hand about the Mojave Desert’s diverse variety of plant species while also gaining unique hands-on skills.