| History |
 Phillip A. Munz Independently, and starting as early as 1904, the herbarium of Pomona College was established upon the large private herbarium of Charles Fuller Baker. Starting in 1917, under the guidance of Philip A. Munz, the Pomona collection blossomed. The highlight was the incorporation of another large private herbarium, that of Marcus E. Jones. Jones was a major force in botany of western America during the late 1800's and early 1900's who described many new species based on specimens in his collection. After a full career at Pomona College, Munz became Director of Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in 1946. Among his visions were to bring the Garden to Claremont and to eventually integrate the Garden's herbarium with that of Pomona College to form one larger, stronger, more encompassing collection. In 1951, Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden moved to the Claremont site, and the Pomona College specimens were brought to the Garden to be housed nearby, but they still remained separate from those of RSA. It was not until the mid to late 1960's that his dream was fulfilled with the complete integration of the two collections. The 1960's and 1970's were a time of considerable growth of the RSA holdings under the guidance of Curator Emeritus, Robert F. Thorne. Thorne worked toward the expansion of the worldwide emphasis to include all flowering plant families, but was also very active in building the California holdings. Growth continued in the 1980's, highlighted by the acquisition and incorporation of the seed plant collections from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (LAM). Included among these were the former holdings of University of Southern California (USC) and Alan Hancock Foundation (AHFH) herbaria. These specimens were especially rich in historic specimens from southern California and were an invaluable addition to the Garden's holdings. The rapid growth experienced during the 1980s necessitated expanding and upgrading the facilities to hold the herbarium's collections. To help solve the problem of limited floor space available for housing collections, space-saving "compactor" systems were installed in four phases with the assistance of grants from the National Science Foundation. These systems utilize standard herbarium cases which are mounted on movable carriages. Each "compactor" has two aisles which may be placed anywhere within the system. Such systems can double the amount of storage for a given amount of floor space. Although expensive (about $59,000 each in the 80s), they are much less expensive than constructing new buildings. Unfortunately, we have now maximized all available space for specimen storage and growth of the collections must be carefully controlled to ensure that remaining room for expansion within the existing cases is sufficient to last until a new herbarium wing is built. Current growth is about 10,000 specimens per year, mounted largely by volunteers. At this rate, there is comfortable room for fewer than 10 more years of growth. |