Mission Statement

The Ronald L. McGregor Herbarium is dedicated to the study of the flora of the Great Plains of North America. Our goal is to expand our understanding of past and current plant diversity and to preserve this knowledge for the future. This is facilitated by the collection, preservation, and management of plant specimens by professional staff.

Purpose and Goals

The herbarium, located at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, is one of 12 scientific research divisions in the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute. The Herbarium houses approximately 400,000 plant specimens comprising exsiccatae, fungi, and seed-, boxed, and fluid-preserved specimens. Sixty-five percent of the collection represents the flora of the grassland biome of central North America. While the focus of the Herbarium is Great Plains flora, we also collect, and accession into the collection, specimens from other areas of North America and the world.

The herbarium also houses a library of 1,400 books and 14,000 scientific articles, and a collection of 30,000 photographic slides. Our mission and policies are in keeping with the mission of the KU Biodiversity Institute, namely, to study the life of the planet for the benefit of the earth and its inhabitants.

The North American Great Plains is a unique and important biome. It covers 2.6 million sq km with tallgrass, mixed, and shortgrass prairie. Its rich soils have made it an agriculturally important area. As a result, few untouched places remain. The Herbarium staff is involved in taxonomic and floristic studies of this region.

We study the flora of the Great Plains for four important reasons. First, to infer the evolutionary and ecological patterns of life. Second, to produce data for modeling plant distributions. Third, to foster appreciation and understanding of the natural world. And fourth, to provide information that addresses human resource needs, including food, fiber, and recreation.

Natural history specimens are the raw materials of biodiversity studies, and we must preserve both specimens and their associated data for future investigators.

We collect and accept specimens from the Great Plains and other areas of the world. With this comes the responsibility for caring for the specimens to ensure their physical longevity and the integrity of their associated data.

The study and care of the herbarium’s holdings is accomplished because the herbarium’s staff has knowledge not only of plant systematics, ecology, and morphology, but also of collection care and management.