Digitizing Engelmann's Legacy: Providing Web Access To Plant
Specimens Documenting the Great American Frontier The Missouri
Botanical Garden has digitized and created an online public
display of the Engelmann Herbarium of plant specimens. The
approximately 8,000 specimens gathered during pioneering
expeditions into the American West following those of Lewis and
Clark are the first scientific records of the plants growing in
the vast wilderness west of the Mississippi River. The
collection forms the earliest verifiable documentation of
species occurrences in that pristine landscape, before the rapid
migration west permanently altered the landscape through human
introduction of non-native invasive species. These specimens
will provide a historic complement to the 3.9 million specimens
already accessible through Tropicos. In addition to more than
8,000 specimen images, the project has also digitized more than
100 volumes of published works resulting from the expeditions,
and has also integrated new spatial analy