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Abstract Detail



Education and Outreach

Baghai-Riding, Nina [1], Jones, Emily [2].

Honoring Henry Judson Jacob, a former Delta State University Dean, for his contributions to the Delta State University Herbarium.

The Delta State University Herbarium (DSC), located on the campus of Delta State University (DSU), has been in existence since the 1930s. It represents one of several major herbaria that exist in Mississippi. Its purpose is to serve as an educational resource for Biology and Environmental Science classes taught at DSU as well as a research collection that focuses on plants from Mississippi. Currently, the collection contains approximately 17,000 specimens. Numerous specimens were collected by noteworthy scientists: Harry Ahles, Delzie Damaree, Robert Stewart, John MacDonald, Albert Radford, and more. Although Dr. Henry J. Jacob was not recognized as a plant taxonomist, he contributed more than 1300 specimens, representing 137 plant families, to the DSC collection while employed at DSU from 1946-1974. He acquired specimens from 29 counties within Mississippi including Bolivar, George, Harrison, Oktibbeha, Tishomingo, Hinds, and Yalobusha. Beyond state lines, Dr. Jacob collected plants from nine other states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. Plant specimens include lycophytes, sphenophytes, conifers, basal angiosperms, eudicots and monocots. Some families including Batidaceae, Najadaceae, Ruppiaceae, and Tofieldiaceae, only exist in the DSC collection because of his efforts. Many of Jacob’s specimens remained in the newspapers he used upon collecting for over 50 years; often these newspapers only contained the date and location. As a result, many of his specimens were ignored until Dr. Nina Baghai-Riding and some DSU students discovered their importance and started work on them. Countless laboratory hours have been dedicated to mounting them on herbarium paper, identifying them, and digitizing them into herbarium databases including SERNEC – Southeast Regional Network of Expertise and Collections and the Delta State University Herbarium website. Dr. Mac Alford, botanist at the University of Southern Mississippi, has helped Baghai-Riding identify many of Jacob’s specimens. Several 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 no longer exist in the area. Dr. Jacob retired from DSU in 1974 but was active in education issues until he died in 1990. He served as a Dean in the College of Education from 1958-1965 and became the Director of Graduate Studies in 1965. The Henry J. Jacob’s Conference Center in Ewing Hall on the DSU campus was dedicated to him in 2005.


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1 - Delta State University, Division of Mathematics and Sciences, Cleveland, MS, 38733, USA
2 - Delta State University, Archives and Museum, Cleveland, MS, 38733, USA

Keywords:
Henry Jacob
Mississippi
herbarium
SERNEC.

Presentation Type: Poster
Session: P, Education and Outreach Posters
Location: Arizona Ballroom/Starr Pass
Date: Monday, July 29th, 2019
Time: 5:30 PM This poster will be presented at 5:30 pm. The Poster Session runs from 5:30 pm to 7:00 pm. Posters with odd poster numbers are presented at 5:30 pm, and posters with even poster numbers are presented at 6:15 pm.
Number: PEO013
Abstract ID:921
Candidate for Awards:None


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