Description: Description: Oxydendrum arboreum leaves

The University of North Carolina
Herbarium
A Department of the North Carolina Botanical Garden

 


The Charles T. Mohr Herbarium Internship Fund
at the University of North Carolina Herbarium

Kevin Chuang
2011 Charles T. Mohr Intern

Kevin Chuang, 2011, photo by Brian Nalley of UNC-CH Biology Department

          Kevin Chuang is from Cary, North Carolina and a senior at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill majoring in Biology.  After taking Dr. Alan Weakley’s LOCAL FLORA class, he volunteered in the Herbarium throughout his junior year. 

          Kevin started in the University of North Carolina Herbarium as the 2011 Charles T. Mohr Intern in May, 2011.   Kevin’s internship duties have been varied, reflecting the myriad of on-going activities in the Herbarium.  For several weeks, Kevin learned his way around the plant collection by filing the specimens that were catalogued and imaged for the Plant Identification Center “PIC” website that was developed in collaboration with the School of Information and Library Science at UNC-CH.  (Click on “PIC Website” on the left-side bar on this page to learn more.) 

          Currently Kevin is curating an extensive set of Hawthorn (Crataegus) specimens from throughout the Southeastern United States that were collected and given to the Herbarium by Ron Lance.  Crataegus are a particularly thorny group of plants, physically as well as taxonomically, and the specimens that Kevin is mounting, databasing, and filing in the collection will help botanists understand this challenging genus.  Charles Mohr spent the last year of his life at the Biltmore Herbarium in Asheville, North Carolina, and overlapped with Chauncey Beadle, who studied and named many species of Crataegus.  “Few genera so widely distributed in the United States have been so poorly interpreted by American botanists as the genus Crataegus,” said Beadle.  Crataegus mohri is distributed from Georgia westward through upper and central Alabama and Mississippi, and northward to middle Tennessee…  I take pleasure in associating with this beautiful and most distinct hawthorn, the name of Dr. Charles Mohr, of Mobile, Alabama.”(1)  In the course of Kevin’s work with Crataegus, we discovered that University of North Carolina Herbarium has two type specimens of Crataegus mohrii.  Both were collected by Chauncey Beadle in the woods around Rome, Georgia in 1899.  These will be photographed and included in the Type Specimen Images section of our website.  In 2007 Dr. James Phipps of the University of Western Ontario placed this plant as a variety of Reverchon’s hawthorn, and gave it the new name Crataegus reverchonii Sarg. var. mohrii (Beadle) J.B. Phipps.  He notes, “In reviewing over 1500 specimens… I have only encountered a few specimens clearly matching the type description.  Likewise I have not knowingly encountered this variety in the field during over 15 field trips to the regions so perhaps it is very rare.”(2)

          The final phase of Kevin’s internship will be spent curating specimens that were a gift from the Jesup Herbarium (HNH) of Dartmouth College.  The Jesup Herbarium has transferred all of their specimens from the Southeastern United States to the University of North Carolina Herbarium (NCU), about 10,000 specimens total. 

          The first set of Jesup Herbarium specimens that Kevin will be processing were collected by Albert Ruth in the Knoxville, Tennessee area in the 1890’s.  Albert Ruth was the superintendent of school in Knoxville and a very serious botanical collector.  The University of Tennessee Herbarium (TENN) in Knoxville was where he deposited most of his specimens.  However, in 1934 Morrill Hall which housed the Herbarium burned to the ground, and all 50,000 specimens -- including Ruth’s -- were destroyed.(3)  Fortunately, TENN rebuilt, and today houses about 550,000 specimens. 

          It seems that the Jesup Herbarium was another recipient of many of Ruth’s botanical specimens, and those are now being accessioned into NCU’s collection by Kevin.  In addition to repairing these old specimens, Kevin will update the scientific name on each specimen to ensure that it is filed correctly in our collection.  We look forward to Kevin delving into these historically and botanically significant specimens and adding them to our collection.

 

1.         Beadle, C.D. (1899)  Studies in Crataegus.  Botanical Gazette 28(6): 405-417.

2.         Phipps, J.B. (2007)  Miscellaneous typifications, new combinations and one new variety in North American Crataegus (ROSACEAE).  J. Bot. Res. Inst. Texas 1(2):  1005-1010.

3.        White, Peter S. (1981)  Looking for Linnaea:  the high Smokies still protect some secrets on their rugged slopes.  The Tennessee Conservationist XLVII:  14-16.         


Description: Description: \\herbarium1950.ad.unc.edu\HerbariumWeb\images\Heston1.JPG
Elizabeth Heston
and granddaughter Hailey Mohr
Heston share the family love for plants.

Description: Description: Portrait of Charles Mohr
Charles Mohr


On December 18, 2004 Ms. Elizabeth Burch Heston founded and endowed the Charles T. Mohr Herbarium Internship Fund to be used to support student interns working with mentors at the University of North Carolina Herbarium in Chapel Hill.

Elizabeth Burch Heston graduated with a B.A. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1954. She currently lives in Hanover, New Hampshire with her husband, John Heston. Her passion is gardening – the cultivation of daylilies in particular. By establishing this internship, Ms. Heston is honoring her great-great-grandfather, botanist Charles Theodore Mohr (1824 – 1901).
.
Charles Mohr was one of Alabama’s first botanists. Mohr was granted an honorary Ph.D. in 1893 by the University of Alabama in recognition of his contributions to the knowledge of the State’s flora and geology. He is best known as the author of Plant Life in Alabama, published in 1901.

If you are interested in applying for the Charles T. Mohr Herbarium Internship, please contact Alan S. Weakley, Herbarium Curator, at (919) 962-0578 or by email at weakley@unc.edu . Any internship candidate should demonstrate keen interest in the flora of the southeastern United States, have good typing skills, and have an interest in learning how to use and curate herbarium specimens.

To make a contribution to or to obtain more information about the Charles T. Mohr Internship Fund, please contact Charlotte Jones-Roe, Assistant Director for Development at the North Carolina Botanical Garden at (919) 962-9458 or by email at jonesroe@email.unc.edu


Sources:
L. J. Davenport (1988) Charles Mohr, Botanist. Alabama Heritage 10: 32-45.

Botanical Garden Foundation, Inc. (2004) The Charles T. Mohr Herbarium Internship Fund Endowment Agreement. North Carolina Botanical Garden, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

C. T. Mohr. Index of Botanists. Harvard University Herbaria.

 


Description: Description: Curriculum in Ecology                 Description: Description: North Carolina Botanical Garden               Description: Description: Biology Department
Curriculum                               North Carolina                                 UNC

  
  
   In Ecology                              Botanical Garden                   Biology Department


University of North Carolina Herbarium
CB# 3280, Coker Hall
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3280
phone: (919) 962-6931
fax: (919) 962-6930
email: mccormickATSIGNunc.edu  

Last Updated: 17 June 2011