Let’s Talk Plants with Dr. Aly Baumgartner

Dr. Aly Baumgartner is the Collection Manager of Vascular Plants for the University of Michigan’s Herbarium, which contains more than 1.75 million specimens. She fills us in on smell tours and her dream of a Mega Herbarium.

What’s different about plant collection versus animal?

The fun thing about plants is that you can collect multiple things from the same organism. For example, if you have a tree, you can take several collections from the same one, and you won’t kill the tree. You can’t do that with a frog. It's such an interesting aspect because it makes it easy for us to collect duplicates. You can keep one and then trade a whole bunch of materials with other institutions.

Tell us about what’s new in the plant collection.

A new thing is not something that we’ve acquired – it’s  something we want to get rid of! We have the largest collection of Mexican plant material outside of Mexico, and a good chunk of that was through the work of Rogers McVaugh, a botanist who worked in the Herbarium for many years. We have so many duplicates that need to be distributed, and have begun the process of going through them and giving them away. I have two goals for the collection:  to make it last forever and make it findable. And if we are hoarding it, even if it's preserved to last forever, it’s not findable. We want to make these materials accessible for people around the world, especially in Mexico.

Do you have a favorite part of the Herbarium? 

I love to take visitors to the Herbarium on a smell tour. It’s one of my favorite things to do to help people experience plant specimens in a different way. When you open a cabinet in the Herbarium, it doesn't look particularly interesting, but when you smell what’s in it, that’s very fun. I also like the specimens in boxes, especially our enormous pine cone. Things that we can’t press flat have to be stored in boxes, and we have a lot of fascinating specimens. 

Speaking of unusual specimens, what’s this about a Mega Herbarium?

A dream of mine is to create a Mega Herbarium for specimens that are too big to be accommodated in a normal herbarium. Materials like six-foot tall grasses and giant pieces of wood. We would need a completely different storage system than our current cabinet one. I think about it a lot and how we could make it happen. 

What excites you in the world of plants right now?

We’re finding different ways to use the Herbarium, and that’s exciting. For example, we just submitted a paper on using AI and large language models to measure herbarium specimens on a large scale. When we get global datasets, we can use AI to process the data, which we wouldn’t be able to if we were inputting it all manually. It’s an alternative way of using and looking at herbaria. My hope is that not just the material is preserved forever but also that it’s a concept of interest and valuable for people for as long as possible.

What is inspiring you in the world of science?

I really like how connected global science can be, and making connections with people all over the world. My first paper for my PhD was a collaboration with someone who I had never met in person but found on Twitter. 

Here at the Herbarium, we are looking towards the future and connected global science by making sure all the materials we have are available as a resource forever.  We are the second largest public university herbarium in North America and the 40th largest in the world. Our materials have historically been used through physically loaning them out. But now that our information is digitally available, it makes it way easier and accessible to an even larger audience.