FT17 - The Field Museum and Botany Department (Repeat of FT-15)

Day:Thursday 7/12
9:00 am - 12:00 pm
Trip Leader: Michael O. Dillon
Email Address: dillon@fieldmuseum.org

Trip Limit: 15

Walking tour of the Field Museum's Botany Department Herbarium, Economic Botany Collections, and Hall of Plants. The tour begins with a visit to the Department of Botany which manages 5th largest herbarium in the Western Hemisphere, estimated to include 2.7 million specimens of flowering plants, gymnosperms, ferns, bryophytes, fungi (including lichenized ascomycetes), and algae. The Herbarium was established in 1894 based on acquisitions from the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. Over 100 years of botanical expeditions have established the Field Museum's herbarium as one of the world's preeminent depositories of neotropical plants. In early 2006, the Botany Department completed a major renovation which included the development of 14,000 sq ft of compactorized space containing new insect-and-moisture-proof cabinets that run electrically on rails. The herbarium provides collections (as loans) to researchers throughout the World's universities and botanical research institutes. In addition the tour will include the Museum's Economic Botany collections and the Hall of Plant Life containing hundreds of plant models, equally spectacular as Harvard's glass flowers. After the tour, participants will be free to view other attractions in the Museum, such as the new Evolving Planet exhibit which covers evolution on the planet Earth. The tour will take 1.5 to 2 hours depending upon number of people.

PARTICIPANTS WILL WALK TO THE MUSEUM