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The Lichen Herbarium at UCR

The mission of the Lichen Herbarium (UCR) is the documentation of the lichen and lichenicolous fungi biota of California. Because fungal species new to science continue to be discovered in California as well as North America, the Lichen Herbarium is actively engaged in work on taxonomic problems and the description of new species of lichenicolous and lichenized fungi. The Lichen Herbarium currently contains 15,290 collections, 12,933 of which are from California (January 2014). The online database is refreshed regularly.

A major emphasis of the study of California at this time is southern and central California. Floristic work continues in the Mojave and Sonoran deserts as well as the Santa Ana and the San Jacinto Mountains, Channel Islands National Park, and Joshua Tree National Park.

The major part of the collection is the work of two collectors: F.M. Reed from the early 20th century and Kerry Knudsen who is currently collecting in California and the Czech Republic. Other important collectors represented in the herbarium include H.E. Hasse, Jana Kocourková, James C. Lendemer, T.H. Nash and Rick Riefner, Jr. A biography of H.E. Hasse by Kerry Knudsen is available for free download from Opuscula Philolichenum. The collection also specializes in Acarosporaceae and in lichenicolous fungi.

The surveys of the Lichen Herbarium are supported by grants and contracts from California State Parks, the National Park Service, the Nature Conservancy and the US Forest Service. The Lichen Herbarium welcomes inquiries about inventories or monitoring as well as consulting work and donations.

For loans and information on collections, contact Kerry Knudsen, Lichen Curator, at Knudsenucr.edu.

The Lichens Web Database

The search page for the non-Filemaker web database for the lichens collection at UCR assumes that the user wants to restrict the search to the entries whose characteristics matched the values entered into the fields provided on the page. For example, the entry of a collector's family name in the Collector's Last Name field and the word "foothills" in the Locality field followed by the clicking of the "Submit" button at the bottom of the page will get those specimens in the database whose collector has the family name entered and whose locality description contains the word "foothills." Those specimens without both will be excluded from the data presented.

For those of you would need a more sophisticated search, such as those specimens found in either Germany or Austria, you will need to use the Filemaker-hosted version of the lichens web database. Both database systems are capable of sophisticated searches. However, we do not have to do the programming for the Filemaker version. We do for the non-Filemaker version.

On the search page, the entries for many fields do not need to be fully spelled out. The beginning first letters will do if you do mind risking getting more than you were aiming for. Keep in mind that if you enter a date in "Search by Date" section, nothing should be entered into "Search by Date Range" section since the specific date will either logically limit the range to that date or preclude any selection of specimens. Similarly, if you enter a date range in the "Search by Date Range" section, nothing should be entered into the "Search by Date" section for the same reason.

In the Condensed presentation of the specimens' data, the up-pointed and down-pointed white triangles will sort the specimens based on the field name they surround. Clicking the Collector's name will get you all the specimens in the database collected by that collector. Clicking the Accession number of a specimen will get you an expanded presentation of the data. You can move from a condensed format to an expanded format and back again by clicking the relevant link at the top.

We will appreciate emails about corrections in the data that need to be made, any suggestions for improvements and comments you may have.

The basic design for this particular web database was derived from Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden Herbarium (RSA) web database (currently under servicing). We wish to thank RSA for their help.

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