I am actively collecting Bryophyte specimens in Northwestern Oklahoma as part of my research at NWOSU. At my old university, Bryophyte specimen packets were housed in specimen boxes (about six inches wide).
How does your herbarium house Bryophyte specimens and where do you get the specimen boxes (if you use them)?
I doubt that you will find consensus on this question. Because I used to work at the Missouri Botanical Garden, when I arrived at the University of Texas I copied the practice at that institution for our small bryophyte collection of using 4-6 inch card filing cabinets, which work well to store standard moss packets vertically (but do not seal as well as real herbarium cabinets. I have also seen herbaria that use standard herbarium cabinets with bin boxes (e.g., https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://herbariumsupply.com/product-category/storage-filing/bin-boxes/__;!!GNU8KkXDZlD12Q!7hQ9aC4cE939YycVWTX6Kh7GcOdUZc--ELJ-2U0GFpL1tHCbqeE0l0XIalo4pH1zC1nV7p46GqTbX_xaJRNbp67ToFFqekKSZrOrYe8$ [herbariumsupply[.]com]), usually with a divider down the middle of the box to facilitate the creation of two rows
We use palm folders at TTC: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://herbariumsupply.com/product/palm-folders-137/__;!!GNU8KkXDZlD12Q!-dhgKRvZBccOQmxlp8lBiBShqzNNWtiHV8kgIZuCbBKzRuLO6AQjsYPE0BfDCqUokq3mtoU1YphWsVrCpU734bqyOa0$ [herbariumsupply[.]com] See attached photos - they work nicely within existing cabinets, and you can put probably 40 specimens in a folder and five folders per standard herbarium cabinet “cubby". Our collection is very small - only about 300 specimens in that photo but we’ve left ourselves plenty of room to grow within each palm folder!
I have never seen or used the palm folder used for Bryophytes. I have always used boxes and am well aware of the dangers of stuffing, but had never considered the issue of the soil falling.
I am starting our collection from scratch here. The area of northwestern Oklahoma is desperately under sampled for the Bryophytes. I am starting on the urban mosses, primarily because I still need to work out getting access to land. I will be databasing all my collections as soon as I get them in the herbarium so that they will
