Deborah Bell

Deborah Bell

Deborah Bell

As a child from Pennsylvania walking through the Laurel Highlands and spotting my first jack-in-the-pulpit, I was smitten by plants and still am. Soon after receiving a B.S. in Botany from Kent State University, I was hired by the Department of Botany at the Smithsonian as part of the staff supporting the U.S. National Herbarium, a reference collection of 5 million dried plant specimens, located in the National Museum of Natural History. For several of the early years, I also managed the research greenhouse, which was inconveniently located on the roof of the Museum’s East Court After 38 years I retired as the Assistant Collections Manager, but continue to volunteer.

My major focus was documentation, accessibility and conservation of the collections. However, I was privileged to take part in expeditions to collect and document the flora of biodiversity hot spots or areas of special interest in Trinidad & Tobago, Venezuela, French Guiana, Peru, Albania (EC Flag Expedition), Gabon, Myanmar, Mongolia, and Tibet. This often included training in-country students or forestry personnel.

Preparing herbarium specimens basically entails pre-Linnaen 16th century techniques. Representative material is pressed, dried and labeled, then distributed to specialists for identification. The final mounted voucher sheets are stored systematically and may be available in perpetuity to researchers for a vast array of studies, many of which were not even envisioned of at the time of collection, for example global change and DNA analysis. What next?