BUT Friesner Herbarium

The Friesner Herbarium is a systematic collection of over 100,000 dried, pressed and preserved plant specimens. The Herbarium, third largest in the state, grew out of the personal collections of Dr. Ray C. Friesner, Professor and Chair of the Botany Department, 1920-1952. Many students and other Butler faculty have contributed plants through the years. The specimens, with their carefully documented labels, comprise a reference library on historical distribution, habitats, and timing of flower and fruit production. The collection's voucher specimens serve to verify plant identification. Although the Herbarium contains plants from around the world, the collection emphasizes plants of Indiana. The collection has samples of 96% of the approximately 2500 taxa of native Indiana plants. Multiple specimens are present for most plants, providing more information than single drawings or photographs from books to assist in learning what a plant looks like. Most of our collections were made during the first half of the century and now constitute documentation of Indiana's historical vegetation. They also provide information on the habitat (e.g., woods, swamp, prairie) where plants were collected and would likely be found again.