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The Ted R. Bradley Herbarium

Krug Hall, rooms 15 and 16

small Krug 15 Research Collection Room, Krug 15

What is an Herbarium?
A collection of dried, pressed plant specimens that are maintained for scientific reference. Specimens are prepared with archival-quality materials and are intended to last for centuries. Click here for what a specimen looks like.

Brief History of the Ted R. Bradley Herbarium
The George Mason University Herbarium was begun in 1967 by its first curator, Professor Ted Bradley. Dr. Bradley added thousands of personal collections over the course of his career and by the time he retired in 2003 had expanded the collection to over 60,000 specimens. The herbarium is listed in Index Herbariorum under the acronym GMUF. Mason's herbarium is tied with LYN as the fourth largest in the Commonwealth. Click here for map of Virginia's herbaria.

small Cabinet One of the herbarium cabinets

Regional Focus and Organization The majority of specimens (ca. 67%) are from Virginia, particularly Northern Virginia (see Figure 1), and are separated in beige folders from other specimens in the cabinets. The remaining ca. 33% mainly derive from the southeastern US and are placed in yellow folders. However, international specimens, such as those from Canada, Puerto Rico, Andros Island (Bahamas), and South America, are further segregated into orange folders. The entire collection is arranged by family, alphabetically by genus and species, followed by geographical segregation at the species and sub-species level.

The Value of the Ted R. Bradley Herbarium for Teaching and Research The herbarium maintains a synoptic collection of Northern Virginia flora that is used by Mason students and local natural resource professionals as a reference collection for ongoing floristics projects. Recent external visitors to Mason's collection include professionals from the Virginia Natural Heritage Program (Flora of Virginia Project), NatureServe, US Geological Service, and Fairfax and Arlington County government. Botanists from outside Virginia also access the collections through loans of specimens to their institutions. GMUF specimens are currently on loan to support an improved Flora of the Bahamas and research on the historical range expansions of invasive plant species.

The herbarium also maintains an extensive photographic and anatomical slide collection as well as a small library of published identification keys and botanical reference books. The herbarium provides teaching material for BIOL 103 (Introductory Biology), BIOL 344 (Taxonomy of Flowering Plants), BIOL 345 (Plant Communities), and BIOL 520 (Systematics of Complex Angiosperm families).

Figure 1. Map of Virginia displaying the geographic origins of a statistical sample of herbarium specimens (N = 635). It demonstrates the Northern Virginian focus of this particular plant biodiversity heritage collection.
small Krug 16 Herbarium prep room, Krug 16

Information for visitors: Visitors should contact the director, Andrea Weeks, to make an appointment to visit the collection. Maps to Krug Hall and parking garages can be found here.