The Wesley E. Niles Herbarium Finds a New Home
In January 2023, the Wesley E. Niles Herbarium was officially moved from its former home at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas to the A building at the College of Southern Nevada’s Henderson campus. The origins of this herbarium date back to 1970 when Dr. Wesley Niles began curating a collection of dried and pressed plants. In 1974, the collection had grown to the point that the Advisory Committee for the Systematic Resources of America designated it as one of 105 American herbaria (out of 1,200) to be considered “National Resource Collections” that were “of such importance for systematic study that their loss or inaccessibility would seriously impair our ability to carry on taxonomic research in the United States.” The Wesley E. Niles Herbarium was the only one in the state of Nevada or in the Mojave Desert to be designated so. Today, the collection comprises nearly 70,000 specimens, mostly collected in southern Nevada and the Mojave Desert; it includes flowering plants, conifers, ferns, mosses, and algae and represents an invaluable scientific resource for research, teaching, and public service.
Herbaria, for those unfamiliar, are museums that house collections of dried, pressed plant specimens and associated collection data. They represent a remarkable and irreplaceable source of information about plants and the environments they inhabit. They provide tangible documentation for the occurrence, distribution, and diversity of a region’s flora as well as comparative material that is essential for studies in plant taxonomy, systematics, anatomy, morphology, ecology, conservation biology, and ethnobotany. We can use herbarium specimens to see the effects of climate change first-hand, to see how some populations disappear over time. We can see how plants are flowering and setting fruit earlier in the year. We can also track the progress of invasive species as they spread to new areas after being introduced.
At its new home at CSN we hope that this herbarium will continue to be a valuable resource and we hope to expand its influence in the community. We hope to start up meetings of a southern chapter of the Nevada Native Plant Society and we hope to form a group of “Friends of the Wesley Niles Herbarium” who can meet to learn about the local flora, assist in curatorial duties to support the facility, and serve as a way for like-minded individuals to meet. Anyone interested in Southern Nevada Native Plant Society meetings, volunteering in the herbarium, interested in seeing the collection, or those just curious about the flora of southern Nevada can reach out to the Collection Manager, Marcus Hooker, at marcus.hooker@csn.edu.