The Emporia State Herbarium was established around 1911 by a teacher who started preserving and cataloging local plants as a reference for identifying them for students and the general public. Today the herbarium is a collection of 43,000 plants that have been dried, mounted, and each is accompanied by careful documentation that can be used to verify identifications. These plants are a permanent record of regional flora, especially for the remaining tallgrass prairie in the Flint Hills of Kansas. Our mission is to document this biodiversity and to maintain the tradition of providing knowledgeable identification of plant specimens for students, scientists, and the general public.
Ratibida logo adapted from Helen Sharp watercolor, from the Rare Book Collection of the Lenhardt Library of the Chicago Botanic Garden.
Photos by [left to right] Tom Eddy, Greg Sievert, Greg Sievert, Laurie Robbins