Botany currently maintains active exchange programs with nearly three dozen herbaria throughout Canada and the United States. Our staff pursues several active collecting programs, emphasizing the flora of the southern Great Plains. We would like to initiate limited, specimen-for-specimen exchanges with herbaria with collecting programs of vascular plants and lichens from grassland biomes worldwide. We are also interested in receiving representatives of the families Asteraceae, Crassulaceae, Cyperaceae, Fabaceae, Juncaceae, and Poaceae.

If interested, please direct inquiries to Dr. Craig C. Freeman, Curator-in-Charge (ccfree@ku.edu) or Caleb A. Morse, Collection Manager (cmorse@ku.edu).

Maintenance policy: 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 Botany's holdings is accomplished because the staff has knowledge not only of plant systematics, ecology, and morphology, but also of collection care and management.