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William
C. Steere, Bryologist
In October 1998, the Garden's bryophyte collection was dedicated as the
William C. Steere Bryophyte Herbarium in honor of the late former
Garden President, whose specialty and passion was the study of the
world's bryophytes.
To the all-too-common question: "What good are mosses anyway?" William
C. Steere, Sr., used to answer: "Well, they've supported me and my
family all these years!" A passion for mosses may surprise laypersons,
but for a botanist, looking at mosses through a microscope is entering
a world of extraordinary beauty. Mosses play an important ecological
role: they absorb and release water slowly, thereby maintaining
humidity in the atmosphere. Mosses and liverworts are found all over
the world, from the tropics to the polar regions, and even the deserts.
Only marine environments thwart the growth of mosses because of their
salt content. Bryophytes are estimated to include 40,000 species.
When Steere began his work on mosses in the early 1930s, bryology was a
field filled primarily with amateurs. Through the strength of his
scientific contributions and his editing of The
Bryologist, the journal of the American
Bryological and Lichenological Society, he raised the field to a
new scientific level. Because of his own strong taxonomic background,
William Campbell Steere, Sr., took an immediate interest in the
Garden's Herbarium, especially the bryophytes, when he became Garden
President in 1958.
As Garden President, he revived the Garden's bryological tradition that
began with Elizabeth Britton, wife of the Garden's founder Nathaniel
Lord Britton. When private and institutional herbaria became available,
he secured them for the Garden. Through his involvement with the National Science
Foundation, he was instrumental in establishing the division that
provides grants for facilities improvements, through which the Garden
has received millions of dollars, including nearly $1 million for cases
and compactors for the new facility.
Ever active in the field, Steere collected many new specimens himself,
particularly from Arctic America and Ecuador/Andean South America. He
was the first bryologist to visit the northern slopes of the American
Arctic Mountains. On his expedition to Antarctica he found a rich and
endemic moss flora. Because of his efforts, the Garden was designated
as a national repository for Antarctic bryophytes. Upon his retirement,
Steere worked to identify mosses that he and others had collected,
resulting in tens of thousands of specimens becoming available to the
scientific community.
The William C. Steere Bryophyte Herbarium, the largest such collection
in the Western Hemisphere, contains approximately 600,000 specimens
preserved and available for scientific study and consultation.
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Online
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Find bryophyte specimens
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