Contact

Andrea Weeks

Organization

George Mason University

Partners

Virginia Master Naturalists

Funding Source

NSF #2022918

Description

Help uncover the diverse specimens of the Lord Fairfax Community College Herbarium, a regional collection with an international flair.

In 2019, the LFCC herbarium was transferred to George Mason University for curation and permanent archival care. Its original director, Professor Robert Simpson, built the collection between 1974-2018 via extensive field work in counties surrounding the Middletown (Frederick Co.) campus of Lord Fairfax Community College, which has recently been renamed Laurel Ridge Community College. However, he also collected widely in the US and Canada and accessioned gift specimens from other botanists. Consequently, the LFCC herbarium contains both an excellent representation of the flora of the Northern Ridge & Valley and Blue Ridge Provinces and a surprising amount of taxonomic diversity of plant species rarely if ever seen growing in the Commonwealth. To streamline transcription, we have already captured country, state/province and county data as well as collector-number.

Geographic Scope

Virgina , US and non-US

Taxonomic Scope

vascular plants

Temporal Scope

late 20th and early 21st century