Delta State University has announced a new display that honors the scientific contributions of Dr. Henry J. Jacob, former dean of education, who collected more than 2,000 plant specimens for the Delta State University Herbarium during the late 1940s to mid 1970s.
The specimens he collected are from many parts of Mississippi including Bolivar, Harrison, Oktibbeha and Tishomingo counties. Beyond state lines, Jacobs also collected plants from Alabama, Louisiana, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, West Virginia, and more. Plant specimens include basal angiosperms; monocots (orchids, grasses, sedges), ferns; eudicots (legumes, mints, yarrows, hickories, and hawthornes) and lichens.
Many of the specimens he collected remained in the newspapers he used on upon collecting; often these newspapers only contained the date and location. The majority of Jacob’s specimens were ignored until Dr. Nina Baghai-Riding and some Delta State students discovered their importance and started work on them.
Countless numbers of laboratory hours have been dedicated to mounting them on herbarium paper, identifying them, and updating information so that they could be digitized and incorporated into herbarium databases including SERNEC – Southeast Regional Network of Expertise and Collections (http://sernecportal.org/portal/) as well as the Delta State University Herbarium website (http://ntweb.deltastate.edu/jtift/dsuherbarium/).
Dr. Mac Alford, botanist at the University of Southern Mississippi, has helped Baghai-Riding identify many of Jacob’s specimens. Many of Jacob’s specimens are being used in constructing a Plant Atlas on Mississippi Plants that will possess more than 8,000 species. According to Alford, some of the species that Dr. Jacob collected from the Mississippi Gulf Coast are rare or endangered.
The display, designed by University Archivist Emily Jones, honors Jacob’s scientific contribution to the Delta State University Herbarium. The display is located by the Jacob Conference Center in Ewing. The display will be up through Dec. 15. Contact Baghai-Riding at nbaghai@deltastate.edu for more information about the Delta State University Herbarium and environmental science program.
