Early Development of Wood Collection Reorganization of Collection Database and Description

Reorganization of Collection

In 1948, Koehler retired and Kukachka became the curator of the collection. Since new oak cabinets built at FPL had just been installed, it was the perfect time to overhaul the wood collection as the specimens were moved from the walnut cabinets to the new cabinets. (Today, both sets of cabinets are still being used.) While moving the specimens, Kukachka decided to reorganize the wood collection from a numerical system to one where the specimens were arranged alphabetically by family, then genus and species, and finally accession number. His goal was to make all the specimens of a particular genus readily available for examination and comparison, to serve the vast number of requests for wood identification. In addition, his philosophy was to keep only samples that were well-authenticated with herbarium material. Consequently, he discarded many undocumented samples that had been accessioned from previous identifications. This left large gaps in the numbering system that were sometimes filled by more recent incidental acquisitions. The unfilled numbers have been referred to as "open" numbers. In addition, the original handwritten index cards were retyped by Kukachka and his secretary. As a consequence, it is difficult to know how much information might have been lost and how many samples were in the collection in 1945 when Kukachka became the curator. However, the last sample collected by Koehler was dated 1945 and numbered MADw 11386. In addition, several samples collected by Kukachka in 1945 are numbered between 11350 and 11400. This suggests that the collection contained approximately 11,000 samples in 1945 before it was reorganized. A search of the files, review of dates on records, and examination of a variety of collectors' names before sample 11400 suggest that Kukachka discarded several thousand samples, possibly as many as 6,000.

Although we can only speculate how the collection was organized and what it contained prior to 1945, today we use the same system initiated by Kukachka. The wood specimens are generally 80 mm (3 in.) wide and 100 mm (3.9 in.) long so that they can be filed conveniently in wood drawers (Figs. 4 and 5). The specimens are organized alphabetically. The scientific name, country of origin, and accession number are written on each sample with a black indelible marking pen. All the information about the specimen is placed on two index cards, 76 by 127 mm (2.9 by 5 in.). One card is filed alphabetically by genus, species, and accession number, and the other card is filed numerically.

In 1955, Robert C. Koeppen started working for Kukachka as a part-time student employee while working on his master's and doctorate degrees in taxonomy at the University of Wisconsin. The highest accession number in the collection at this time was about 17000. It is obvious that some open numbers had been filled, but certainly not all of them. Also, some numbers were still being purged as Kukachka found misidentified samples and "useless" samples, as he called those without associated herbarium vouchers. Before Koeppen arrived, there were no records of accessions, loans, and exchanges. However, because of Koeppen's training as a taxonomist and previous work in the University's herbarium, he initiated good curatorial practices and accurate recordkeeping for both the herbarium and the wood collection.

In 1963, I arrived at FPL as a summer student from West Virginia University, where I was majoring in wood science. In the summer of 1965, I worked for Kukachka and returned in January 1996, while I undertook graduate studies in botany at the University of Wisconsin. After finishing my master's degree in 1968 with Professor Ray Evert, I enrolled as a Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland in the Botany Department working under Professor William Louis Stern, who had just returned to teaching from work at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. By this time, the FPL collection had grown to nearly 25,000 specimens, but open numbers still remained. By the time I returned to FPL in 1970, the number of wood specimens had more than tripled with the acquisition of the Samuel James Record Memorial wood collection (SJRw, formerly Yw) from the Yale University School of Forestry.

The MADw collection has grown to nearly 50,000 specimens. We are continuing to add specimens to this collection but have more or less restricted the accessions to those that are backed with herbarium material. On occasion, however, I will add specimens without vouchers if we do not have ample material or if the specimens are of exceptional quality (e.g., from large mature trees showing heartwood).

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