The Flower Files

Inside the Shirley C. Tucker Herbarium, the largest collection of plants and fungi specimens in Louisiana

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In the annals of LSU’s Shirley C. Tucker Herbarium, there is this story:

On October 15, 1869, fire licked the walls of the seminary building on LSU’s original campus in Pineville. Americus Featherman, a professor of languages and the university’s first botany instructor, rushed out of the burning building—“his arms full of wildflowers.” 

Two weeks later, the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy began the move to Baton Rouge. 

Building the LSU Herbarium Collection

Featherman had founded LSU’s first herbarium the same year as the fire, and in the years to come he built up a collection of specimens documenting plant life in Louisiana in the post-Civil War years. 

The first long term director of the LSU Herbarium was the renowned botanist Clair Brown, whose Wildflowers of Louisiana and Adjoining States remains a popular guidebook more than fifty years since its publication by Louisiana State University Press. Brown himself contributed over 8,000 specimens to the herbarium, which at the time was housed on the third floor of the Life Sciences building in a 400-square-foot room. 

Under the direction of Lowell Urbatsch, an Iowa native who came to LSU in 1975 by way of the University of Texas with a specialty in plant taxonomy, flora of the region, and grasses, the collection grew in size from 40,000 specimens to almost 200,000. This sudden growth required a move in 2001 to a 6,000 square foot space in the new Life Sciences Annex to accommodate the growing collection, and allow space for future growth. 

In 2016, the LSU Herbarium absorbed the Tulane University Herbarium and its holdings, which included nineteenth century specimens collected by botanists like Josiah Hale, William Marbury Carpenter, and John Leonard Ridell. 

The LSU Herbarium Today 

Today, under current Director Laura Lagomarsino, the Shirley C. Tucker Herbarium remains on the second floor of the Life Sciences Annex and is home to more than 380,000 specimens—making it the largest collection of plants and fungi in Louisiana. One of the oldest specimens can be traced back to the voyages of Captain James Cook in the 1700s. Carl Linneaus, the eighteenth century Father of Taxonomy, would smile at the similarities between his cabinet cataloging system and the specimen cabinets at the Tucker. 

Lagomarsino credits Urbatsch—who, though now retired, still makes near daily visits to study plant specimens—with demonstrating to the university the importance of an herbarium.  “There was no kickback when he said his replacement should be a faculty member trained in botany,” she said. Lagomarsino has a Bachelor of Science in genetics and plant biology from UC Berkeley and a doctorate in organismic and evolutionary biology from Harvard University. As Director of the Herbarium and an Assistant Professor at the University, Lagomarsino’s duties consist of teaching, researching tropical plants, supervising the collections manager, pursuing grants, and advocating for the herbarium.

While most research conducted at The Shirley C. Tucker Herbarium is pure science with no commercial implications—“knowledge generation for the sake of knowledge generation and student training,” as Lagomarsino puts it—the work done here also lays the foundation for drug discovery, according to Jennifer Kluse, Collections Manager. The researchers at the herbarium have recently supported LSU faculty research on anti-cancer properties of native plants. 

The DNA of preserved plants in the LSU collection, sometimes called “vouchers,” can provide precise comparisons when it comes to identifying new plants and their properties, Lagomarsino said.

In an effort to continue expanding the collection, herbarium botanists, students, and LSU scientists in related fields make an annual specimen collecting trip to locations in Louisiana and Texas, in addition to collecting excursions to places like Costa Rico, Peru, Columbia, and Australia.

Who is Shirley C. Tucker? 

The LSU Herbarium is named for former LSU Boyd Professor Emerita Shirley C. Tucker, now ninety-seven and living in Santa Barbara, who rose from a lecturer at LSU to one of the first women to receive the university’s highest faculty ranking. In addition, her personal lichen and bryophyte herbarium is one of the largest of its kind in the southeastern United States. In 2015, Tucker gave $2 million to the LSU Herbarium and plant systematics program in the College of Science’s Department of Biological Sciences. With an almost $1 million supplement from the Louisiana Board of Regents, Tucker’s donation supports the herbarium, a chair in plant systematics in her name, and graduate student scholarships.

Since her donation a decade ago, the herbarium has continued to build its collections and garner support. In 2022, the Shirley C. Tucker Herbarium’s holdings were entirely digitized—providing a data record of every single specimen in its massive collection. 

For more information or to schedule a tour of the Shirley C. Tucker Herbarium, visit lsu.edu/herbarium.