Herbariums are plant libraries.

They're filled with fragile specimens that have been carefully documented and stored away.

Every specimen has a label that indicates where it was collected, who collected it, the date.

Every specimen is like the page of a book.

It's Monday, May 6th, and you're listening to Science Friday.

I'm sci-fi producer Rasha Arredi.

The oldest herbarium specimens are hundreds of years old, and they're still chock full of

information for scientists to go back and look for.

So today on the show,

a sneak peek into the Ada Hayden Herbarium at Iowa State University, and later a birthday celebration for Science Friday's podcast, Universe of Art, featuring some of your own stories.

Here's Ira Flato.

We've brought SciFri to Ames, Iowa this week. We're at Iowa State

University. The Ada Hayden Herbarium contains more than 700,000, 700,000 specimens collected from

the Hawkeye State and beyond. Joining me here in the Iowa Public Radio Studios are Dr. Lynn Clark, director of the Ada Hayden

Herbarium, and curator Deb Lewis. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you. Thank you.

I've got to get the Lewis and Clark out of the way. You've heard that just a few times,

I'll think. Yes. Yes. I'll bet you have. Deb, if I walked into your herbarium, what would I see?

First of all, you would just see metal cabinets, sort of resembling a gym locker room.

But if we opened those cabinets, we would find dried and pressed plant specimens or maybe packets of mosses and fungi or similar things like that.

Rose and rose a cabinet.

Rose and rose, yes.

Because you have 700,000 specimens in there.

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