Bryophytes

The bryophyte herbarium includes approximately 280,000 specimens, of which some 240,000 are mosses. With about 50,000 moss collections from the southeastern United States, the DUKE collection is one of, if not the most important, resource for documenting the southeastern moss flora. This flora is very rich, with approximately 48% of the moss species and 55% of the genera that are recorded from all of North America. Over 238,000 specimen records can be searched online.

In recognition of Lewis E. Anderson's contributions, the bryophyte herbarium was formally named the L.E. Anderson Bryophyte Herbarium in November, 1998. (Read more about bryophyte herbarium history).

Important collections of bryophytes include those of L.E. Anderson, R.E. Andrus, H.L. Blomquist, M. Crosby, A.J. Grout, B.D. Mishler, W.B. Schofield, R. Schuster, A.J. Shaw, R.E. Stotler and B.J. Crandall-Stotler mosses, 48 bryophyte exsiccatae collections, and over 900 bryophyte type specimens:


The moss herbarium of the Sullivant Moss Society (the predecesor of the American Bryological and Lichenological Society) has been curated by L.E. Anderson since 1936, and it is now incorporated in DUKE.

The DUKE bryophyte collection has been and is being actively utilized by members of the bryological community for the Bryophyte Flora of North America Project (BFNA).

In September 2020 we became part of the GLOBAL TCN project. Our aim is to image and digitize the remaining 45,000 specimens collected all across the world while providing students with training in digitization and collections management. Records of the entire DUKE bryophyte collection should be available for searching online at the end of the project, in 2024.

The bryophyte collection is arranged phylogenetically according to Buck & Goffinet (2004) to families, and alphabetically by genera and species within families. Within species, the arrangement is geographically into color-coded folders for North Carolina, New World and Old World. Undetermined specimens are filed at the beginning of each genus.

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