Native Plant Society of New Mexico Native Plant Society of New Mexico

Harpo Faust, Collections Manager of the University of New Mexico Herbarium, will give a talk on the importance of herbaria and on active research and work occurring at the UNM Herbarium. What is the role of herbaria in contemporary botany research?  What are current opportunities for community participation in our UNM Herbarium? The talk will cover some background on herberia, the history of plant collecting, projects happening at the herbarium now, and the future of botanical research in New Mexico.

Bio
Harpo Faust is currently the Collections Manager at the University of New Mexico Herbarium, housed within the Museum of Southwestern Biology. Harpo has been at the herbarium for 2 years, where she oversees day to day curation of the collection, hosts many active students, researchers, and volunteers in the collections, mentors students in collecting, and works on collection-based research in New Mexico. Previously, Harpo worked as an independent botanist within the southwest. Harpo got her graduate degree at the University of Idaho where she wrote a flora of a mountain range in the high northern Rockies for her masters. Harpo is originally from the San Francisco Bay Area and got her undergraduate degree at UC Santa Cruz where she originally started working with plants. Harpo loves field work and working in collections and hopes to continue to work filling collection holes, botanizing throughout the southwest, and uplifting other queers in botany.